PS 3535 
.U67 S8 
1901 
Copy 1 












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Class _P535M. 
Book._ 






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COPyRIGIIT DEPOSIT. 



TO THE MEMORY OF ABBT OSBORNE 
RUSSELL, THESE THE SONGS OF HER 
INSPIRATION 





SUCH STUFF 
AS DREAMS 




n !! a 



qfJ 



THE LIBRARY OF 
OONGBESS, 

Two CuHE8 HeMIVEO 

JAN. 2 1190? 

CO^WGHT ENTRy 

CLASS Ar XXo. NU, 
COPY 6. 



copyr ight 190 i 
The Bowen-Mer ri ll Company 



PRESS OF 

BRAUNWORTH & CO. 

BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS 

BROOKLYN ,N. Y. 




CONTENTS. 



Interlaken 


I 


Le Triomphe de la Republique 


4 


Success 


8 


In the Church of St. Mary RedclifFe, Bristol 


9 


Off the Lightship 


17 


The Sixty-Second Birthday of Swinburne 


18 


City Roses 


.22 


The Cloud-Capped Towers 


25 


Songs for Barbara 


31 


France ! 


38 


Failure 


41 



Contents, 

Picardy, 1899 4 2 

Forgiveness 5 3 

The Rhone Valley at Leuk S^ 

Impressions 7^ 

Achievement 7" 

The Old House at Waramaug 71 

Las Guasimas °° 

The Fleet at Santiago ^^ 

The Last of the Armada 84 

The Fifteenth of February 88 

Boer and Briton 9^ 

Nikolson's Nek 9^ 

Before a Greuze 97 

Seven Sonnets to Julia Marlov^e loi 

To Philip Massinger, "A Stranger" 108 

Switzerland ^°9 

Beethoven, Op. 13 ^ ^° 

Beneficence ^ ^ ^ 

"The Sleepless Soul" " 112 



Contents, 

The Empress Theodora 113 

Fruition 114 

Change (Rondel) 115 

March (Ballade) 116 

Helvetia (Villanelle) 118 

The Music of Meiringen (Ballade) 119 

At Thun (Roundel) 1 21 

On Barbara's Birthday 122 

Dead Music (Triolet) 124 

The Chimera (Rondel) 125 

Memories of the RifFelberg (Rondeau) 126 

Der Silberhorn (Chant Royal) 127 

Chatterton at Bristol (Roundel) 130 

At Wilderswyl (Rondelet) 131 

The Tunes of March (Villanelle) 132 

Ringgenberg (Triolet) 133 

Retrospect (Roundel) 134 

The Dreamer I. (Ballade) 135 

The Dreamer II. (Ballade) 137 



Contents, 



Marguerite (Rondelet) 

Lake Michigan in June (Triolet) 

To Barbara (Rondeau) 

Benjamin Harrison 

In the Autumn Woods (Sestina) 

The Long Fight 



139 

140 

141 
142 
144 
146 





INTERLAKEN. 



For alien eyes she has no visions fair : 

Her sons alone, the sons of dreams may know 

What glittering gems are bound across her hair, 
What roses underneath may fade or glow ; 

Or, sometimes in a silent night of June, 
The half-sad smile upon her slender lips, 

When one white arm around her sister moon 
The wooing fleece-cloud slips. 

Silence is hers — not colorless of sound, 
A bloomless waste unto the listening ear. 

But deep-drawn singing of the gulfs profound 
Made vibrant with the strains of star and sphere, 

With mellow breathing of the faint-heard horns 
And far-off roll of dim delightful drums. 

The symphony of still sun-litten morns 

That from her god-head comes. 



Inter laken» 

Between her hills green-skirted, bathed in light. 
Ethereal, ageless, not of earth, she stands, 

The virgin goddess clad in virgin white. 

Beyond the reach of Time's revoking hands. 

Her stern sweet beauty, scatheless of all change, 
Alone is like to him, the sun, her lover. 

Who clothes upon her dazzling robes and strange 
From beyond her and above her. 

For him alone her face uplifted glows. 
For him is made the music of her voice ; 

His kiss alone her fair white forehead knows. 
Alone his footsteps wake her to rejoice. 

His breath, the wind, about her mourns and raves. 
He woos her with his sprites of mist and cloud; 

She answers from the hollows of her caves 
With echoes low or loud. 

And unregarded as the seas that beat 

With waves of green and bluish-tinted haze 

By harbor hills and reefs about her feet 
Are other loves than his and other ways; 

Or as the tombs, forgotten, crumbled, old. 

That lie forlorn beneath those troubled deeps 

To house old lovers of the goddess cold, 
Diana of the Steeps. 



Inter laken. 

She of the steeps is as of subject skies. 

The moon her chill and silver sister, queen. 

And queen and mistress to the straining eyes 

That in dead dreams her haunting face have seen ;- 

Have seen and known, as once the shepherd boy 
In shades Arcadian knew the soft sweet kiss. 

And light touch on his curls, with perilous joy 
To own the goddess his. 

Nay, in no deep embossed arboreal vale. 
Haunted of elves and resonant of leaves. 

Or shadowed hollow of the moonlight pale. 
Sweet-scented with the piled Arcadian sheaves, 

Her trysting; but vast halls, star-lighted, dim. 
Beyond the gleam and glory of her crest. 

Where echoed quirings of an unheard hymn 
Breathe only silent rest. 

No fever and no fainting and no pain. 

No tale of mute unprofitable days. 
No passionate mad longing and no stain 

Of earth's delight, no blaming and no praise ; 
Eternal calm, immovable, as down 

The growing twilight when the day-winds cease. 
To these green valleys from the fire-tipped crown 
The whisper falls of peace. 




LE TRIOMPHE DE LA REPUBLIQUE. 

Place de la Nation^ November /p, i8gg. 

The long straight files with measured thoughtful tread. 

Brown-handed and bare-armed, sweep through the street 
To where the goddess stands with fair-poised head 

Sun-gloried, and cleft chains beneath her feet. 
These are the sons whose unforgotten sires 

Broke at her word such chains of darkness ; she 
Is the goddess that in earth's enduring fires 

Forged from the links the sword that made them free. 

Here in the city once of all men's haunts 

The darkest, whence was cast her son first born 

With ban for blessing, and for crown the thorny taunts 
Offeree that seemed eternal, on this morn 



Le Triomphe de la Republique, 

Made festal, lo, these only knights appear : 
Enfranchised serfs of hoary Time that wield 

With unswayed hand the hammer for the spear. 
The trowel for the sword and saw for shield. 



Shall she not triumph ? Lo ! 
Before the dawning was, while yet the day 
Only the dreamers saw and might not know 
If light from sun or marish mist should grow. 
This was a spirit, tireless on her way 
Returning, strong 
And still unsummoned righter of old wrong, 
With torch to kindle, at her side 
The blade at whose wide flash the darkness died. 

This face was pallid then. 
Wasted with watching, with faded hopes grown gray. 
Channeled with tears shed for the sake of men, 
Sad with more grief than three score years and ten. 
Childless she was, and hopeless of her way, 
A weary spirit driven 
As homeless winds about the halls of heaven ; 
Her footsteps no man marked, nor where 
Her shadowy form slipped through the starless air. 



Le Triomphe de la Republique, 

Thrice on this chosen place 
Of hers she has stretched hands of heaUng, twice 
Gone hence betrayed ; still on her shield is trace 
Of many a spear-point, still across her face 
The faint flush lingers, fading. Sacrifice 
A shadow leaves 
And tears yet gleaming ; still her bosom heaves 
From panting now forgotten — for 
She knows she shall go henceward nevermore. 

These were the lips that now 
So soft and smiling, on that morn were set 
Against the trumpet ; with this smoothest brow 
She bore the battle ; from this hand the vow 
Of freemen came ; these eyes that glisten yet 
Were then a light 
Far shining in the clanging van of fight. 
And when that sweetest voice out rang 
The wide world listened to the song she sang. 

Shall she not triumph ? Where 
The sun goes of her light some echoes break. 
And all earth's toilers for her visage fair 
Have touch of sunnier sky and sweeter air ; 
And clearer in remotest regions wake 
The songs of earth 



Le Triomphe de la Republique, 

Because she came with newer notes of mirth. 
Hope has bent down to man and shone 
In the waste places for her sake alone. 

The clouds may form or fade, 
As gloom hangs heavy now on that far race 
Of hers to Southward ; strength and greed arrayed 
Sore smite her scattered children ; undismayed. 
Untouched of shadow on her lovely face, 
Patient she waits 
The tides unseen that sap old forms, old hates. 
Old wrongs, before her feet to fling 
These wrecks where lie the wrecks of throne and king. 

What shall her triumph be, 
When clouds and doubting, dark and strife are done. 
And from her gates above the slumbrous sea. 
Wherethrough shines morning now but glimmeringly, 
Noonward through golden vaults ascends her sun ; 
When Force is dead 
At last, and man, rose-crowned about his head 
Like hers, free, equal, brothered, goes 
Unfeared and fearless while her noontide glows ! 



7 




SUCCESS. 

There came a flower in a city lot. 

By careless breeze or bird a chance-sown seed. 
And glowed a day, a tiny scarlet spot 

Half hid by sombre waste of dust and weed. 

And one wan face behind a tarnished pane, 
Turning to look its last on squalid square, 

Caught glimpse of that bare bud and smiled again. 
And smiling still lay dead and sweet and fair. 

Then blew the south wind's furnace breath that way, 
The lonely flower faltered, shrank and died ; 

A stronger gust before the close of day 

Flung its brown leaves across the pavement's tide. 

8 




IN THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY REDCLIFFE, 

BRISTOL. 

I. 



Dawn, that from the eastern hills, low-lying, 

Smites with fire. 
Like shafts her fairy fingers have set flying. 

The topmost spire. 
And turns to burning gold against bright blue 

The filmy lace 
That lines of pinnacles and towers anew 

In outline trace; 
Noon, that pours on silent chancel floor 
The red and purple glory of the saints, 



In the Church of St. Mary Redcliffe^ Bristol. 

While through the twilight of the great north door 

A voiceless whisper sighs and sinks and faints ; 
Night, when down the shadowy aisles the gloom 

Lies breathless and the ghostly footfalls fade. 
And faint, like bale-lights in a haunted room, 

The altar bears the bars of moon and shade — 
All these and all their hours of bright or dim 
And all their ways 
These long years gone were known of him 

Whose boyish heart 
Throbbed out its little tale of days 
In weariness apart. 



II. 

He saw all visions : here with solemn state 

And low-voiced chant the russet monks went by; 
There through the gold at heaven's eastern gate 

The hour-led sun looked forth across the sky, 
And here with blaze of helm, white foam of plume. 

Banded with light from many a silver shield. 
Long lines of knights rode through the cloistered gloom, 

Down clattering gaily to the listed field. 
No day might be so drear 
But through its darkness clear 

lO 



In the Church of St, Mary Redciiffey Bristol, 

For him the sunlight lay asleep 
On unknown meadows flooded deep 
In stainless gold of daisies, starred about 
With fox-glove bells but yet half budded out ; 

And in the shade 
A drowsy woodland sprite his bed of cowslip made. 



III. 

He heard all music : then these shadows, dumb 

To us, sonorous sang with throbbing strings 
Of minstrels and the muffled drone of drum. 

With choirs unseen and unheard beat of wings. 
Wild sounds of trumpets singing to the charge. 

Wild whirr of arrows and hot hiss of spears. 
The chime of corselet and the tang of targe, 
And clink of bridle reins rang in his ears. 
Or through the midnight's calm 
He heard the May-tide's psalm. 
And all his spirit sang aloud 
The change of changing sun and cloud. 
The tunes of winds across the hawthorn brake 
And every carol wherewith skylarks wake 

Melodious morn 
Came with the ghostly strains of organ anthems borne. 

1 1 



In the Church of St. Mary Redcliffe^ Bristol, 

IV. 

For him all beauty breathed in Music; light 

Of sun-birth or of star-dawn rose and fell 
Surge-like with sound, and when the morn was bright 

Through all this carven wonder came the swell 
Of symphonies by angels played. He knew 

All moanings that the wind through bare boughs weaves 
In March-tide, when the vast and vivid blue 

Is chord-like; and all whispers round the eaves. 
In every garden close 
Sang low for him the rose, 
The vine climbed high its matin hymn 
To murmur in the morning dim ; 
The sun along the cloud's white edges smote. 
As from a harp, a clear and lingering note, 

And now the sea 
Thundered the diapason of her mystery. 



V. 



Sorrow, too, he knew, the best of all. 

Best of all he knew that visage dreary. 

Darker shadows than from night's hand fall 
Hovered close upon his footsteps weary. 



12 



In the Church of St, Mary Redcliffe^ Bristol, 

Heavy hung the hours about his bed 

While the shades and shapes all wan and haggard. 
Going to and fro with restless tread, 

Drove from languid eyes sweet Sleep, the laggard. 
Care was comrade to him. Grief was kin ; 

Boding thoughts with him had made their dwelling. 
Sad as souls weighed down with sense of sin 

Throbbed the sense of tears in notes upswelling 
Under all his songs of brave and gay ; 

Tears that in his eyes still lurked or lingered. 
Let the meads be merriest with the May, 

Or dun Autumn come, the flying fingered, 
Weaving webs of red and gold and grey. 

Still warm tears — for all things lovely perished ; 
Sunsets stayed not though the rocks remained, 

Cold and dark as flowers the dew had cherished 
Left forlorn when Summer's suns had waned. 

Came no leaf along the wet walk flying. 
Torn untimely from the wind-wrought quire, 

Glowed no rose reft from its stalk and dying. 
Wasted all its wealth of form and fire. 

But his soul to their dumb stifled crying. 
Little griefs and piteous moan. 

Note for note raised song divine replying. 
Singing here alone. 



13 



In the Church of St, Mary Redcliffe^ Bristol, 

VI. 

Only the voice of a boy 

Singing and sobbing alone ; 
Only the voice of a boy 
In songs that were barren of joy, 
Songs that made end in a moan. 
Only the voice of a boy that has fluttered and 
upward flown, 
Light as a beam or a bird, and clear as the dawn 
on the sea ; 
Yet from the light it has left, from the chance of 
the seed it has sown. 
Glows the whole world with new glory like 
Spring risen fresh on the lea. 
Only the voice of a boy, but now from its echoes arise 
Songs that make sweet all the air with buds and 
blossoms of rose. 
Songs that gleam like Shelley's, a wonder of stars 
in the skies. 
Songs that glow in the heart as a hope or a 
beacon glows. 
Birds have no notes that are sweeter, nor June from 
its green woodland lyre. 
Mountains have voices no surer, and not from 
the sunset has flown 



14 



In the Church of St, Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, 

Thoughts that are greater of grace than the songs 
of love and of fire 
Sprung from the voice of a boy here singing and 
sobbing alone. 



VII. 

Not yet departed, not yet hushed or still. 

A presence hovers round these portals where 

His passing face made bright the heavy air. 

And whence he heard that strange sweet singing 

thrill 
All shadowland with strains so faint and fair. 
Not gone ; his voice in all these echoes clings 
With softer sounds than the moan outside of dove. 
And when the organ peals this soars above ; 
Sweeter than field-heard matin bell it rings. 
And to the choirs of sleep and dreams it sings. 
Not yet departed: to the listening ear 
This pile transformed, made glorious in his song 
As in a sun that sets not, firm and clear. 
Where of his short sad flight the memories throng. 
Shall but the echoes of himself prolong. 
Men to the dust of other mighty dead 
With solemn song and speech the great shaft rear. 

15 



/;/ the Church of St, Mary Rede /iff e^ Bristol, 

We know not in what lost and lonely bed, 
Unwept, alone, with shards and sorrows spread, 
Worn from lost fight this boy has laid his head : 
But the monument of all he was is here. 



VIII. 

What thoughts, what dreams, what passions, what 

desires, 
Here burned and struggled in his boyish breast ! 
Now from this window through the sunrise fires 
He saw upclimb strange dome and mountain crest. 
Now watched the sun beyond the pillared west 
Fling its red torch on citadels and spires. 
Oft on these steps his little foot was prest. 
Wearing with haste the cold responseless stone ; 
Here went his hand, and here with hair back-blown 
And head on arm the slender form found rest. 
Not yet departed whence his love had grown 
Like lingering ivy round each storied stone : 
Not yet departed — even now alone, 
While in the slowly growing gloom I stand, 
A breath of song sweeps by, a light is shown. 
And from the dark I dream a small white hand, 
A boy's small hand, is laid within mine own. 

i6 




OFF THE LIGHTSHIP. 

Into white clouds, as white as snow. 
The smother springs as on we plunge and quiver. 

And through the shrouds are blown the clouds. 
Or drift across the decks that lean and shiver. 

Somewhere within the mists, I know. 
Belike just where the silver sail is lifting. 

Sweet Iris floats on pearly motes 
To draw her magic bow athwart the drifting. 

And " Iris ! Iris! " cries the sea. 
Leaping aboard to pluck her thin gown under. 

And " Iris ! " sings through harp-like strings 
The wind above the green sea's mellow thunder. 

She will not hear, she will not see. 
Intent upon her colors, else unheeding ; 

Like mortal maid, she is not swayed 
By prayers and tears and lover's tender pleading. 



17 




THE SIXTY-SECOND BIRTHDAY OF 
SWINBURNE. 

(Born April 5, 18 jy.) 

Prophet, whose straining eyes 
Watch ever eastward while the slow stars fade, 
Hast thou beheld the hope-tinged morning rise 
Far off on alien seas, in other skies? 
Or hast thou from thy sky-bound station made 
On lonely peak-tops far away, aloft. 

The footsteps heard that oft 
Have sounded in thy visions soft 

And distant, but as clear 
As woodman's stroke across the dying year? 

18 



The Sixty-Second Birthday of Swinburne, 

For thou through all thy days 
Hast been as one for man's sake set apart, 
Beyond the clash of meaner things and ways. 
Since first the touch of strong sun-splendid rays 
Was laid on singing lips and tender heart. 
First of the sons of song, with upturned brow, 

Orphean prophet thou. 
Tell us what light breaks on thee now ; 

For in the vale we grope, 
Hearing thy words but cheerless of thy hope. 

Singer, whose song's high flight 
Wings steadfast on, serene, from star to star. 
Melodious, molten, fledged with golden light 
As from a mountain summit glitters bright 
When noontide's stern unclouded glories are, 
Has thy great soul a new more resonant sound. 

Fit for this season, found. 
That gave us thee while April bound 

With passion flowers thy head 
And music's purest effluence round thee shed ? 

For thou in all thy singing 
Hast been as one in scorn of Time and Change ; 
Years that make thin the weaker voices, clinging 
Like echoes where they once rose clear and ringing, 

19 



The Sixty-Second Birthday of Swinburne, 

Thy voice make only still more sweet and strange. 
Therefore we pray thee of thy great song's fire ! 

Strike from thy golden lyre, 
O minstrel of the world's desire. 

Those notes that wake again 
Our hearts with preludes of thy mightiest strain. 

Captain, in whose firm hand, 
Far forward where the battle trumpets blow. 
Has shone for us thy word, a burnished brand. 
Drawn without doubt wherever Right makes stand. 
Drawn without fear where fires the fiercest glow. 
What old oppression whereto cowards kneel. 

What tyrant, now shall feel 
The swift stroke of thy keen-edged steel ? 

Before what buttressed shame 
Thunder the wrath of thy consuming flame ? 

For thou in all these years 
That crown thee now as with a crown of flowers. 
Hast been too great of heart for any fears. 
Dauntless, immovable for aught save tears. 
Supernal sign of strength for us and ours. 
Therefore, we pray thee, on before and lead ! 
For never had more need 
Of such as thou in word and deed 



20 



The Sixty-Second Birthday of Swinburne. 

The world that dark with wrong 
Waits for such light as lightens from thy song. 

Master, while at thy feet 
Like rose leaves red and yellow and pale 
The song leaves flutter, still more fresh and sweet. 
Of singers of thy great fame not unmeet 
With sound of many voices crying ** Hail ! " 
A quavering voice upon that great throng's brim. 

Unheard and harsh and dim, 
Sings to itself a tuneless hymn 

In praise of thee — O more 
Than cloud and fire across this desert's floor. 

For thou art life to those 
That hear thy spirit, master of tone and tune. 
Whose echoes breathe in every wind that blows. 
In dawn and sunset, quiet star that glows 
At midnight and the stainless depths of noon, 
With all sounds glorious, from great ocean's swell 

To drone of murmuring shell 
And far-heard chime of evening bell ; 

As if, O music's king, 
Thy hand then strayed upon the heavenly string. 



21 




CITY ROSES. 

I cannot smell the balmy pine in the city's dust 
and heat, 

1 cannot see the woodland vine as I walk the 
crowded street ; 

I know that while a furnace breath on baking pave- 
ment blows 

The shadows of great clouds are sailing where the 
laurel grows. 

Stifling ! To think, with a choking pain, of the 
shadowy thickets there. 

Where cool waves lave the shores of lakes and ferns 
with maidenhair. 



22 



City Roses. 

Yet beauty holds her sway serene here, in the 

crush of crowds, 
As where she blossoms in the rose or floats in the 

folds of clouds ; 
The lesson that the mayflower tells in nooks of 

forest wild 
Is told again in the town's hot mews in the smiles 

of a happy child, 
And daily in the little square the merry children 

playing 
Are not less fair than Phyllis where in the meads 

she goes a-Maying. 

The city has its roses, too ; for, looking up, 
I see 
Upon the tenement's high wall a bit of greenery — 
A little box, with trailing strings of purple morning- 
glory; 
A mimic world, where nature still repeats her 

season's story. 
Say I am weary as I plod in labor's sullen ways. 
Two merry eyes look down on me with soft and 

lambent gaze; 
A little maid— my little maid — my white rose of 
the town — 



23 



City Roses, 

'Tis like a whiff from out the wood, a gHmpse of 

odorous down; 
For day by day she smiles at me, and from her 

dainty lips 
A kiss she throws, my city rose, from slender 

finger tips. 



I cannot smell the balmy pine in the city's dust 

and heat, 
I cannot see the woodland vine as I walk the 
crowded street — 

But the city has its garden spots. 
Its heartsease and forget-me-nots. 




24 




THE CLOUD CAPPED TOWERS. 

Gold squares across the tessellated floor, 

Gold lances shivered on the fountain's brim, 

Gold threaded curtains at the great court door, 
Half hiding where the court lies cool and dim- 
This is no vision that has come to him ; 

By many a toiling path, oft weary and alone. 

He has reached at last this fortune all his own. 



This is his spacious dwelling, past all doubt. 
Although he tries his senses if he wake. 

And clasps the polished columns round about 
And dips his hand within the mimic lake 
To note the tiny gold fish flash and quake; 

In his own marble citadel he stands 

And knows himself the lord of many lands. 



25 



The Cloud Capped Towers, 

And all is his — out there the nodding flowers 
And long dark vistas of the garden close. 

And here the sunny heights of gleaming towers, 
Whose carven turrets at his bidding rose. 
The very labyrinth oi the walks he knows. 

And pictured hangings of each lofty room 

Scant shaken with the garden's blown perfume. 



How came it his ? Something he left unclear 
Slinks at him ghostlike from the shadows yet. 

No matter that ; this drop is not a tear 

That flecks his finger from the fountain jet. 
There is no weeping where the lotus net 

Is woven and the trembling spray beads lie 

Crisp in the curling lily leaves near by. 



Silence and rest — now senses dull and weary 

Have what they sought through the long dolorous 
day, 

How far off seems that time, uncouth and dreary. 
When he, not clothed as now in rich array. 
Wandered a waif upon a bitter way. 

His wandering must have been the dreamed of thing. 

And all his life long he has been a king. 

26 



The Cloud Capped Towers, 

He minds a dim old time when they had played 
At king and queen beneath the apple bough. 

He and his black-haired, blue-eyed country maid. 
Plaiting the apple leaves about her brow 
With blossoms golden-hearted; even as now 

The little smile will break on him to wear 

This gold half-showing in her wind-blown hair. 



Where is she, then? What woodside way along 
Goes straying now the patter of her feet 

That to him, waiting, in the wood-bird's song 
Came sounding like its light recurrent beat 
To make the Autumn stillness still more sweet? 

What lying tongue had told him she was dead ? 

To-morrow he would crown her stately head. 



Above the fountain's little chime 

And through the sob of music dying. 
Beyond the chorals of the lime 

And Summer through the lattice sighing, 
I hear the coming of her feet, 

The little rustle of her dress ; 
I hear my quickened pulses beat, 

And know her by her loveliness. 



27 



The Cloud Capped Towers. 

I shall hold her on my heart again 
After long years of numbing sorrow. 

Forgotten all the ancient pain. 
To-morrow and to-morrow. 



After the sunrise we shall go 

By mazes of sun-heavy wheat. 
And fragrant hedges set a-row 

Across the thick-starred daisies sweet ; 
And so unto our state again, 

After long years of bitter sorrow, 
Forgetting all the smart of pain. 

To-morrow and to-morrow. 

Beneath this rose and silver gleaming 

The little tender curving face ; 
From up-cast eyes upon me beaming 

To know who holds her heart's first place; 
From eyes with blue no longer wet 

With vain tears of the dim world's sorrow. 
Loving and learning to forget, 

To-morrow and to-morrow. 

To-morrow he will take her hand in his 

And wander through their endless fair domain, 

28 



Tf)e Cloud Capped Towers, 

And think out ways of unimagined bliss 

That somehow fail him in his throbbing brain. 
For now, confused and faltering, he would fain. 

Like tired child, to drowsy pillow creep 

And take his fill of luxury and sleep. 

So breaks the morrow. Or is that the light 

Of beam-swung lantern there that flickering glares 

Into his eyes, still dull with drug and night? 
Long lying on his wretched rags, he stares 
Where the pale beam the filmy darkness tears. 

Then at one stroke of reasserting pain 

Comes to himself and misery again. 

Into the city's reawakened day. 

Into the staring sunlight of the street. 

He struggles forth upon his aimless way 

Benumbed and dazzled and with stumbling feet. 
For all part in that tide of life unmeet. 

To stand where dreamless death goes whirling by. 

And look and long and lack the will to die. 

The drifting derelict of man we mark, 

A thing debased below man's outward seeming. 
The godlike mind now windowless and dark 



29 



The Cloud Capped Towers, 

Whose rift of light is only purchased dreaming. 

Pity herself, upon all others beaming. 
Hardens her lovely face as hard as fate. 
And wise men hold him in contempt and hate. 

Come, then, O wise man ! tell us — what is all 

More worth than dreaming? Lo, the world's 
long story ! 

Where marble palace and the stately hall. 
All that man labors for, his hard-won glory, 
All records of his triumphs grim or gory. 

Are but the visions of a brain gone mad. 

As unsubstantial, fleeting, and as sad. 




30 




SONGS FOR BARBARA. 

I. One Tear Old. 

Ah, little feet ! If from your rosy palms 

A prayer of ours might keep all harder ways, 

And through the shaded calms 

And over fragrant balms 
Your pathway lead you all your changing days. 

Should any prayers we know 

Fail from our lips to flow 
And bless you, spring-bird whiter than the snow ? 



31 



Songs for Barbara, 

Ah, little hands ! If any thought of ours 

Might gather from the sunbeams that bright gold 

That falls in yellow showers. 

Or store the scented flowers 
That now your tiny fingers strive to hold. 

Our thoughts should at the gate 

Of each benignant fate 
Beseech for you that came the spring flowers' mate. 

Ah, soft brown gentle eyes ! Through all your years 
If any hopes or deeds of ours might keep 

From any touch of tears 

Or any furtive fears 
Your dainty sheen that was not made to weep. 

Should hopes or deeds forget 

To strive and struggle yet 
To make your joys forever, brown-eyed pet ? 

Ah, sunny head and sweet ! If such a light. 
Golden and tempered as of April's youth. 

For all our wishes might 

Shine here forever bright 
To change all dark to day, all night to truth. 

Should not our wishes rise 

For you beyond the skies 
That light should make your world a paradise ? 

32 



Songs for Barbara, 

Ah, little smile ! that on your baby lips 

Even in your sleep like sunshine comes and goes 

As when the sunset slips 

From cloud-ports of no ships, 
If pains of ours might keep that tender rose 

Should not our sorrows be 

A perfect joy to see 
Its fruitage be for you the least felicity ? 

Ah, lovely life! that is the only link 

To bind our days beyond their mortal span. 

Life standing on life's brink. 

May all dark shadows shrink 
Before you as the March-blown fleece clouds ran 

Before your day of birth, 

And left the joyous earth 
As bright with sun as we are with your mirth ! 



II. Two Tears Old. 

Will you remember in the times hereafter. 

When kindly years this floss have longer spun. 

Which way turned your earliest dawn of laughter. 
Where your faltering footsteps used to run ? 

Or when you ruled, our loveliest queen and holiest, 
Crowned with the sunbeams in your gracious way, 

33 



Songs for Barbara, 

Of all your slaves who was the least and lowliest 
That owned your sway ? 

Will you remember names your lips first learning 
Lisped with a sweeter sound than wind through 
leaves. 
Yea, when the sumach into red gold turning 

Sings in an autumn morn of gathered sheaves? 
Or when, like buds before the quickening paces 
Of May-time rains and suns by summer sent. 
Your dreaming eyes unclosed upon what faces 
Above you bent? 

We shall remember through all dim to-morrows. 
Though time come plucking all our blooms but 
this, 
From all the years' grey wastes and shadowy sorrows. 

The scented blossom of your birthday kiss ; 
And, sweetheart, hear your little treble ringing 
As in deep woods sometimes at stillest noon 
A tree-top thrush alone starts softly singing 
Its trilling tune. 

We shall remember little ways and wanderings, 
The serious little mouth and thoughtful eyes, 

34 



Songs for Barbara, 

Brown-studies and mute looks and gravest ponderings, 
And curious quests unspoken at the skies ; 

The tireless feet and busy little fingers. 

And wise young way vain grievings to beguile. 

But most of all, O soul of spring-tide, lingers 
Your earliest smile. 



We shall remember all these things, recalling 

The tenderest face and purest, while we think 
Of you as of a rose that never falling 

Lives white and sweet and grows but does not 
shrink ; — 
Or on dark days your very name comes bringing 
These memories back, as some swift sunbeam 
might 
Make sudden way through cloudy curtains, flinging 
A shaft of light. 



III. A Song in the Springtime, 

What shall I say is like to thee, Barbara mine ? 
Something a rose is like to thee, framed in vine; 
White and touched with a warmer hue 
Near its heart. 



35 



Songs for Barbara, 

Where the diamonds of the dew 

Tremble and start; 
Just the grace of a rose soft white. 
Just as pure from the dull earth's blight, 
Fresh from the dews of the kindly night. 

Child thou art. 



Moon on the water is like to thee, Barbara dear. 
Slenderly shining eastward, faint and clear; 
Ripple to ripple, the soft sheen slides 

Through the night, 
Drawing over the amethyst tides 

This silvery light; 
So at times thy little face seems 
Fairy fresh as the young moon's beams. 
Just as the film on the ripple gleams 
Dainty bright. 

Something the wind is like to thee, round the eaves; 
Wind that breathes of the blooming of fresh young 
leaves. 
Wind that white from the apple tree 

Lightly flings. 
Wind that just kisses the sleeping sea 
And softly sings; 

36 



Songs for Barbara, 

Just as light the May-wind goes, 
Just as sweet as its sweet breath blows. 
Fair as the freshest flower that grows 
Beneath its wings. 

Something a star is like to thee, Barbara love, 
Sweetest star in the serenest skies, far above. 

So conies in her tenuous robes, even now. 

The shadowy West, 
One such light on her stainless brow 

Borne for crest; 
Child-like star and star-like child, 
Living light of a way undefiled, 
Pathways are brighter since thou hast smiled, 

Brighter and blest. 

All these things are like to thee, Barbara, yet 
What shall tell the whole tale of thee, Barbara pet ? 
Birds that come through the morning blush 

Clearly shown ? 
Songs of spring in the morning hush 

Faintly blown ? 
Yea, but where in the world shall be 
Image of aught that may mean for me 
Truly symbol or sign of thee 

But thou alone ? 



11 




FRANCE! 



I. 

Beloved of nations ! Thou in whose free hand 
Was borne the torch that dawning on dark days 
Burns now a Ught for all earth's gloomiest ways. 

Here on this margin of a century's strand 

Wherein thy name has been a flashing brand, 

What were the word compact of love and praise. 
Where were the wreath of laurels or of bays, 

Fit for thy fame as sun for morning land? 
We from across these leagues of shining sea 
That in old days shut not our loves from thee. 

When down its hollows glimmered less the sail 
That bore thy hero from a nation's heart. 
Remembering, sister, all thou wast and art. 

Cry to the fair and firm Republic, Hail ! 

-.8 



France ! 
II. 

Thy foes sit by thee prophesying ill. 

No change of dawn or dark or sun or cloud 

But in the shadow they shall see thy shroud, 
And in the sun some portent to their will. 
Smoulders about thee that old hatred still 

Since first before thy face the kings were bowed, 

Since first before thy sword Old Force was cowed, 
Thus have they lied that had not power to kill. 
Thou shalt decline, O Queen, my France, they say 

Whose fingers fain would close about thy throat. 
Decline ! In widening waves day after day 

Slowly thy faith becomes the whole world's note. 
" Let liberty and light," it runs, "have sway," 

And still resounds the string thy hands first smote. 

III. 

Not in thy mellow land alone, or where 

Thy flag makes morn and sunshine, thou art France ; 
Wherever men in all the world's expanse 
A handful gather, smit with fire, and dare 
To strike for men and freedom while they bare 
Defiant breasts against a desperate chance 
For her dear sake whose earliest sword and lance 






France! 

Wast thou, and faithful — fairest France is there '1 
Lo, on the lonely veldt while heroes died 

Thy name was music and thy faith was light, 
As comes like bugle blast on hard fought day 
Some deed of thine across the battle's tide. 
Or warrior stricken by outnumbering might 
Thinks " France ! " and flings himself into the 
fray ! 

IV. 

Now when the tide runs backward through the world. 
With faith unshaken and with brow still turned 
Upward and eastward where the morning burned, 

Men see thee still, as when the war clouds whirled 

Thickest around thy flag then first unfurled, 
Standing alone, for thou hast not unlearned 
That creed of man whose light, by rulers spurned. 

Flashed forth a sunbeam through the darkness hurled. 

Not yet to thee that faith is made a jest. 
The name heroic and the daring deed. 

Where struggling man struck at a tyrant's brow. 

Are deathless with thee, worn upon thy breast; 
Brutus of old, and Tell, and Winkelried, 

And Washington, and Hale, and Kruger now. 



40 




FAILURE. 

What if thy glory, Uke a great green tree 

With slow grown weft of waving branches, spread 

Till farers by the weary land or sea 

Afar gaze wondering on the sky-borne head, — 

And violets grow not in its sunless shade, 
The clover sicken and the daisy die. 
And in the barren circle scarce a blade 
Wave a wee signal to the yellow fly, — 

What if, enriched by every wind that blows. 
Thy tree win praise from shifting tribes of men. 
And by its sullen plot dead leaves of rose 
Go drifting and unheeded — aye, what then ? 



41 




PICARDY. 

1899. 

The watchful castle scowling on the hill 

Shed forth a brooding sadness — 
A far-flung shadow, listless, gloomy, chill. 

That hushed all sounds of gladness 
And deep across the silent hamlet lay, 

A moveless sign of sorrow. 
From sunburst to the drooping death of day, 

Dewfall to joyless morrow. 

Elsewhere the heralds of the new day's birth. 

With flags of fire outflinging, 
Roused all the melodists of heaven and earth 

In field or forest singing; 
New-made from careless sleep the giant Toil 

With dauntless eyes upstarted 
And trudged across the rifts of furrowed soil 

And hailed the dawn, light-hearted. 



42 



Picardy, 

Elsewhere when deepening purples slowly drew 

Below the shadowed ledges 
Unburdened villagers that freedom knew 

Might meet beside the hedges; 
Children might laugh aloud, and smiles might be 

In tired eyes no stranger, 
And no man shrink nor glance behind to see 

A lurking shape of danger. 

Elsewhere the leaf-tuned whispers of the night 

Might not be all-foreboding. 
Nor each limb drag a chain of feudal might, 

Each heart a wrong corroding; 
Hope might arise still shining, fears might cease 

Sometimes their busy pursuing. 
And night wing by, her poppied sheaf of peace 

The land with slumber strewing. 

But for these slaves — what hope or help had they? 

Death was their hope : none other. 
Day was to heavy night and night to day 

One sorrow to its brother ; 
Peace in the sunset smiles might go unseen. 

Red cloud to white cloud flying — 
Peace was alone the rounded bed and green 

In the strait churchyard lying. 

43 



Picardy, 

Brave days ! Fair lay the castle's broad domain 

For tithes and taxes teeming. 
Long leagues of guarded forest and champaign. 

Hillside and river gleaming; 
My noble lord's, the all ; and his were these. 

The things that God had given 
But soul enough to serve him on their knees 

And herd where they were driven. 

Brave days ! When yoked and harnessed to the plough. 

The goad his shoulders tickling, 
Fine sport it was to see the bondman bow 

His head to hide tears trickling ; 
Or watch the grandsire's quivering face above 

The slave-born grandson yearning. 
And eyes old tears had worn on hopeless love 

Their lightless glances turning. 

Brave days ! Sometimes my lord and train rode forth 

With spurs and bridle ringing. 
When faint across the Autumn-breathing North 

The hunting horns came singing; 
And these should start the prey as other hounds 

Through swamp and thicket panting. 
And beat the bush, and follow hard the sounds 

Of dog and horn loud chanting. 



44 



Picardy, 

Brave days ! While now no stricken mother wept. 

More often and more slowly 
Churchward the little dull procession crept 

When tolled the church bell lowly. 
And oft returning from the hunt or ride 

A castle-man, half-sneering, 
Saw from the hedge one haggard face, mad-eyed 

And hatred-darkened, peering. 

Sunk cheeks, bent forms, the saddened face or grim. 

On lips the thin claws trembling, 
Hawk-like or feverish, haunted eyes or dim, 

A latent thirst dissembling — 
What mattered to my lord that clearly saw 

Himself by God's direction 
Ordained to be a pillar of rank and law 

And hold these in subjection? 

Brave days forever I No less brightly glowed 

In hall the lanterns flashing, 
Nor less for groans the warming grape blood flowed, 

With merry music clashing; , 

For rooted in the bases of the world 

Stood noble pomp and power. 
And these were as the wind that idly curled 

Around the turret tower. 



45 



Picardy, 

" It is your lot to toil," the fat priest said. 

And mumbled his ave the faster, 
" Contrition is as a gracious banquet spread. 

Servant obey thy master." 
"Let them eat hay," said my lord, ** my other 
beasts do ; " — 

A smile his stern face crackled ; 
The good jest round the reverent table flew. 

The fat Driest shook and cackled. 

Till one, the youth whose dark presageful gaze. 

Deep-eyed and dully burning. 
The castle-man at dusk by homeward ways 

Had noted on him turning. 
With lank stretched finger strode the guests among 

And stayed the shouts of laughter. 
Till with the fluttering crows he lifeless swung 

Upon a turret rafter. 



Vive la Republique ! The night was very dark, 
A starless pall of bitterness and pain. 

When first her glittering sword struck out a spark. 
Hard smitten on a chain : 



46 



Picardy, 

And in the brooding skies 
Watched the malignant eyes 
Of fiends that sought with force to slay or stifle her 
with lies. 



They rose that night, they left their huts, with 

white hard haggard faces. 
They gathered in the starlit lane and silent took 

their places; 
Strange arms they bore for such a use long hoarded 

in safe keeping, 
Secreted scythes and rusty hooks and long knives 

made for reaping ; 
The mow gave up a sharpened stake, the swamp 

fens yielded sledges. 
And broken pikes and picks came forth from 

corners of the hedges. 
No word, no shout, no cry of wrath, swiftly and 

with no turning 
They swarmed along the stony heights where 

beacon lights were burning; 
They burst upon the castle gate, with hammers 

beating thunder, 
And smote with fierce resistless tide until it fell 

asunder. 



47 



Picardy, 

While frantic clanged the deep-mouthed bell and 

sang the bullets flying, 
With tramp of men, and flash of shots, and wailing 

of the dying. 
They faltered not, nor ever stayed, but as one fell 

another 
Snatched from his hand the sunken pike and battled 

for his brother. 
Slow yielding backward step by step the hench- 
men, fiercely fighting, 
Circled their lord with flashing fire of long swords 

swiftly smiting. 
Till one by one, each in his place, they fell where 

they had striven. 
And trembling stood my lord ringed round with 

the herd that he had driven. 
So equalled, front to front at last, came serf and 

lord unspeaking. 
While over all his wild eyes roved, one sign of pity 

seeking. 
Vain search from bitter face to face, tense, fateful 

and unchanging, 
From glittering eyes to twitching hands his fearful 

gaze went ranging; 
Till from his knees, late bowed in vain, they caught 

him pale and pleading. 

48 



Picardy. 

Without a word they haled him forth, a halter for 

his leading. 
And stuffed his mouth with hay and grass, and tied 

his hands behind him. 
And flung him in the castle moat and let the fishes 

find him. 
Then up the creaking stairs they thronged, for that 

last service eager. 
And pried and tore with pike and pick, or bare 

hands wan and meagre. 
And wrenched each hated stone from stone, each 

counterscarp and casement. 
Ana blotted it from off the earth, from turret tower 

to basement. 
Then turned they home and had no fear and waited, 

calmly scorning, 
What flood of vengeful wrath might come upon 

them with the morning. 
It came not. With that night fled forth old sorrow 

swiftly winging ; 
Witn sunlight burst on sons of men a new age 

sweetly singing. 



Vive la Republique ! There comes one star ana breaks 
A lance lane through the clouded dull expanse; 



49 



Picardy, 

Vive la Republique ! There sounds one note and wakes 
The sleeping soul within the soul of France ! 
And now the fervent glow 
Falls on the earth below, 
And light and music fill the air from heaven's 
bright overflow. 



In varying shades of brown and gold and green. 
Square after square along the valley sides. 

The liberal earth from heaping horn unseen 

Pours spendthrift down her wealth in jewelled tides. 

Below the slope the sturdy village spreads 
Its round of dull red walls. 

With quiet corners where the rosebush sheds 
Its leafdrift and the ripened apple falls. 

From where the church its crumbling crosses rears 
The little street a long bow bends to show 

The old moss-tinted tiles aslant in tiers 

And southward standing cherry trees a-row. 

The old inn opens wide its studded door. 
And in its Summer shade 

The white-capped girls, above its sanded floor, 

Cut snowy loaves and the snow-white cloth is laid. 

50 



Picardy, 

There is no castle glooming on the hill, 
There is no shadow on the hamlet cast ; 

The stalking fear that once with finger chill 

Laid hush on hearts and lips and hopes has past 

With things forgotten. But to scattered stone 
The dark old memory clings. 

And on one cottage wall there hangs alone 
A battered sword between two rusty rings. 

And on a fallen fragment at full noon 

The farmer sits and eats his cheese and bread. 

And hearkens while the wind a rustling tune 
Plays in the grass that grows above the dead ; 

And looks across his little sunny square 
Of grapes all purple turning 

Down to that dim red patch of tiling where 

He knows for him his hearthstone iire is burning. 

The air breathes blossoming song. While from their 
feet 
The beaten dust in dwindling spirals springs. 
Slow step the stallions to a rhythmic beat. 

The wagons rumble, and the driver sings. 
The very wind has merrier tunes than when 
It blew about the moat; 



51 



Picardy. 

The blackbird pipes a cheerier lay, the wren 

Goes twittering on the sheaves with clearer note. 

There is no castle watchful on the hill ; 

But where its moveless shadow lay of old 
Enfranchised sons of the Republic till 

Their straight trim tracks and mounds of fertile 
mold; 
And rising with the sun go forth and reap 

The fruitage fully grown 
Of night's dark seed-time, when on threatening steep 
With long-pent wrath let loose this seed was sown. 



Blue, white and red ! Long live the flag of France ! 

Its signal shall be bright for evermore ; 
Blue, white and red ! It led the world's advance. 
The hope it lightened glows from shore to shore. 
And now no land but knows 
What fair new faith arose 
When recreated France sprang forth and grappled 
with her foes ! 



52 




FORGIVENESS. 

Of all sweet things is none so sweet as this; 
Not honey that the lily's lover sips, 
Nor wild wood rose that opes her folded lips 

At faintest sound of wings to get his kiss. 
Nor waterfall that down the cool rock slips. 

There is no peace like this ; not that deep calm 
At midnight when the great still moonlight pours 
Its tide of gold on level ocean floors 

And no last breathing of the night wind's psalm 
Stirs sleeping ripples by the soundless shores. 



53 



Forgiveness, 

There is no joy like this — not wind and sun 
Are blither spirits on the first spring day; 
Not more serenely on their shaded way 

The singing river currents seaward run ; 

Yea, this is far more swift and sweet than they. 

There is no ease like this that comes and steals 
Heartache away and sighs and old dull pain, 
And on each weary wound and throbbing vein 

Lays anodyne that soothes, and touch that heals 
Worn eyes with dear forgetfulness again. 

Yea. And what is this to him who goes 

Stumbling and blinded from sharp stone to stone. 
Crushed by no unhelped burden but his own, 

Dumb to the morning song, poor clod to rose. 
Who can forgive all save himself alone ? 




54 




THE RHONE VALLEY AT LEUK. 



L 



Across the meadow by the whirling river 

The laggard sun, restrained of fairy hands, 
A late-come archer, from his shining quiver 

Smites one by one the warders of the lands; 
From castle-head to head that long undaunted. 

Hard beaten by the suns and storms and fates. 
Of half-forgotten legend only haunted. 

Keeps guard above the torrents at its gates. 

Earth hath not heard such song of salutation. 

Triumphal chant and sweet sonorous lay. 
Rung forth from holy station unto station 

Before the marching of the lord of day ; 
Rung forth from herds upon the shaded highways 

A far-off clash and clang of mellow sound. 
Attuned of herd-horns in unnoted byways 

Soft blown by herd-boys stretched upon the ground. 



55 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 

Awakened winds arise and breathing lowly 

Around the casements of the tower four square 
Go tip-toed through the dusty chambers slowly 

To flute and pipe an old sad homesick air. 
Sung once, belike, to windows where fair faces 

Looked out and longed across the grim gray bars, 
Or joyed as we on these soft-shadowed spaces. 

On snow-piled peaks and fields and skies and stars. 

And now no face is at the window peering. 

No eyes look down aflame with love or light; 
No singing of old songs for lovers' hearing. 

No footsteps on the stairs by day or night ; 
All dust the hearts joy thrilled or by grief broken. 

Nay, dust the very eyes, the waving hair ; 
Beyond remembrance, without sign or token. 

Untouched of grief or joy or tear or care. 

Unto this end was all the pain and striving. 

The toil to build, the blood to have and hold ; 
Fury of combat, clouds of arrows driving, 

Leaguer and camp and gallant deed and bold ; 
Beneath the stars long dreary vigil keeping. 

By day the clash of swords and clang of shields : 
Hearts — to be dust in star or sun-light sleeping ; 

Towers — to be fragments in the sweet green fields. 

56 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 

These things the sun has seen, the sun that pouring 

Through vale and cleft the glory of his gaze 
Flames on the stainless summits, rest imploring, 

Now answering fire with fire, now dim with haze. 
Fire answers fire, or on the snow-lipped edges 

Rings darker hollows out with glowing light. 
Till over summits, fields and whitened ledges 

Slowly descends the all-effacing night. 

These only, suns and nights and heights uplifted, 

Steadfast stand, while the restless tides below 
Year after year along the pass have drifted 

As drifts the shade of cloud across the snow ; 
While back, as to their mother's arms returning. 

The works of man, the towers that told of pride 
With those that held the symbol of his yearning. 

Turret and cross sink earthward side by side. 



II. 

The shadows were as blue. 
As soft the sunsets, and the heights as still. 
And such sweet Summer breaths went pouring through 
The hollow of the hill. 



57 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk. 

When up the winding way. 
While hope in all men's eyes turned towards the 
dawns, 
Eastward they rode all the long lingering day 
Beside the river lawns. 

Red morning on the shields 
With strange rose-hearted fire undying glowed. 
And redder on the flags with snow white fields 
The holy emblem showed ; 

With red iov hope's bright hue 
And red for fire that fiaught in hot young veins, 
And reddest ^ov the fall of fiery dew 

On sun-baked Syrian plains. 

Above the river's rhyme 
And tunes that bird and wind-swept forest sang 
With steel to steel a sharp insistent chime 
Their casques and corslets rang 

Through curves of green-walled glen, 
Fronting the castle there aflame with flags. 
To bear the tramp and tramp of marching men 
Among defiant crags; 

58 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk. 

Where men might never be, 
Where dwelt alone the oread of the snows. 
Whose steps beneath the sun, unchallenged, free. 
The west wind only knows ; 

Startling the echoes there 
Across the snow-flood's tide and track and blight, 
And vast unfathomed gulfs whose stirless air 
Still holds in chains the night ; 

Keen echoes ringing clear. 
From bare bleak cliff or drifted summit leaping. 
In silences where none there was to hear 

And sound itself seemed sleeping; 

No warning voice to chide, 
No stern-browed prophet with uplifted hand. 
Nor presage of the brooding wings spread wide 
And the woe upon the land. 

Though to her surer sight 
Revealed were those slow circling birds of prey 
That winged unseen with fouler birds of night 
Their even-paced dark way ; 

59 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 

Into what depths of gloom. 
What misery and pain beyond all cure, 
They walked death's road in the shadow of a gloom 
Predestinate and sure. 



She might make moan in vain, 
And wailing protest none would hear or heed. 
Came not for all her tears of mist or rain 
A help upon their need. 

No, not from that sweet sky 
Whereto on bended knees with halting breath 
They raised for blessing a beseeching cry 

On a cause of blood and death ; 

Not from the cross, blood red. 
Debased by conquerors to a thing of war. 
The aspiring Greek saw from his thorny bed 
Afront him and afar ; 

Beheld the burning bars. 
Adrift upon a surgeless sea of light. 
Slowly efface the pallid chill of stars 

Across the breathless night ; 

60 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk 

While as a robe let slip 
A hallowed hush fell through the shuddering air, 
And faltered on the awe-touched monarch's lip 
The breath of formal prayer. 

Beheld he ? Or but dreamed — 
Who knows ? For now, transformed to sign of hate 
From sign of love, steadfast before them gleamed 
To mock them to their fate 

The empty cross and vain 
Of might unmighty, that for victory gave 
Defeat, for conquest death, and loss for gain. 
For fame the nameless grave. 

Since of its promised gifts 
Fulfilled the glory was a vagrant dust. 
An empty tale of white bones piled in drifts. 
Dead hate and bitter lust. 

And down the winding way. 
Despised, abased, rejected and cast out. 
Slow stumbling westward all the Winter day 
Came back the remnant rout; 

6i 



The Rhone Valley at LeuL 

Too war-worn it may be. 
Too sick at heart of wanderings and despair, 
The solendors of the sunset once to see, 
What changes in the air ; 

Or mark more than before 
How vainly broke the steady streams of light 
On slumberous summits, as on a changeless shore 
Shatters the foam wave's might. 

They rise and break and fail. 
And stifle not, nor ever hush nor stay 
The hvmns reverberate raised by choirists Dale 
Before the coming day. 

For these sound ever, though 
Years change, hopes fail, tribes perish — these endure 
While fair false lights, their careless heads below. 
Deride men or allure. 



III. 



And surely as to us the echoes mourn 

Of these that strove and perished long ago. 

And wild winds through the crannied turrets blow 

A ghostlv strain of trumpeting forlorn. 



62 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 

Not otherwise they also dreamed their dreams 
Of pilum, sword and javelin, and of him 
Whose face, a bitter bale-fire growing dim. 

Still through the murk of fallen empire gleams. 

For he came hither with the lesser tide ; 

Yea, standing here perchance his boding gaze. 
To see the slanting sun-shafts and the haze, 

Blue shot with gold, from hill to valley glide. 

Lightened a little, or apart a pace. 

While now unheard with ringing tramp and tread 
The legions passed before his unbowed head. 

He watched the shadows on the mountain's face. 

What fleeting glimpse or brief bright dream he had 
Of guiltless days and slow-pulsed life aloof. 
Of curling vines across the cottage roof 

And Summer making all the grape rows glad, — 

Who knows ? Who knows what sudden sombre 
thought 
Late knocking at his weary heart there came 
To show one sum of bitterness and shame. 

The gainless fabric that his toil had wrought ? 

Bright winged above the pass the eagles swept ; 
Beneath, the shadow of their sailing cast 

63 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 

One gloom from Alps to Tiber, and the last 
Of Romans for the lost republic wept, 
And one star more that shed before men's eyes 
Somewhat of hope, somewhat of light and cheer. 
Touched to dumb darkness by the gathering fear 
Swung cold and rayless in the stormy skies. 



Vain tears were his who thought these things were 
worth 
His weeping — these or other; for their will 
Of men have Change and Time for good or ill ; 

Primeval godhead, to whose monstrous mirth 

Man and his little strange laborious cares 
Are consecrate; who make a jest and toy 
Man's momentary glimpse of grief and joy, 

A huge Titanic pastime of his prayers. 

For Change that knows not rest by night or day, 
Slow shaping dooms in Cimbrian depths unseen. 
The fateful bow made sure, the shaft made keen. 

And marked for death the bright imperial prey ; 

And that last Roman soul through last of tears, 
Forthlooking on his last of life and light. 
Might have foreseen the eagle from his flight 

Heart-cleft beyond the veil of heavy years. 

64 



The Rhone Valley at LeuL 

For eagles nor for legions stays the wheel, 

For emperors nor kings, for force nor might. 
Here where these abbeys to their carven height 

Rang with the passing of the iron heel 

And flashed with lightnings of the imperial wings 
The dust of these and all their tribe whirls by. 
The flame of empire fades upon the sky, 

But man goes on unthralled of thrones or kings. 

The drifting dust goes whirling, and as ghosts 
Strange forms within and airy shadows pass 
Up angles of the hillsides dark with grass. 

Shapes surely like the fierce-eyed, skin-clad hosts. 

The surging sea that hereby gathered wrath. 
Oft beaten back and oft returning strong 
To break across the fallen hold of wrong 

Wide swept at last a new day's gleaming path. 

Steadily to southward, forceful, fateful, slow. 
They, too, went by, heavy of face and strange. 
Through shadowy thicket, past the clouded range. 

Threading the thin strait cleft, trampling the snow; 

Countless, resistless, restless — feet that trod 

The wine press out and mighty hands that bore 
From Northland forests to the Southland shore 

The bitter draught and plied the scourge of God. 

65 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk. 

These went their destined way as others went — 
Toiled for no fruit, hoped highly, dared or quailed ; 
Beat idly on the unopening gates and failed 

As we, with bleeding fingers torn and rent ; 

Plucked at such adamantine chains and won 
What win the tireless wayless winds that hurl 
Dead leaves along the dusty way or furl 

The forest flags before the Autumn sun. 

Some imprint of their passing done in stone. 
Some tingling in the blood of wilder life, 
A stirring of the pulse at sound of strife, 

The piteous broken statues that atone. 

Someway atone, the horror of the time — 
These only bear the record of a race 
Before the surges of the years efface 

Forever name and fame with curse and crime. 

Unseen — unheard — indomitable as they, 
As restless, surer of her might and aim, 
An unguessed cloud, an unbeholden flame, 

A spirit moved above their wandering way. 

Year after year and age by age to bear 

The quenchless torch whose light divine shall grow 
From hope to having, from a flame to glow 

That sun-like shall make gold the common air. 

66 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk. 

But she sweeps on and on forever, she 
As little noting of appealing cries 
As feeble hands upreared against her, flies 

Straight starward like a star, as fair and free. 

Not shades that pass nor phantoms like the night. 
Nor man that breaks his hopeless heart or waits 
Sustained and sure the slow paced certain fates. 

Make swift or slow the winging of her flight. 



IV. 

But the tides flow ever and cease not their rising 
and falling. 
Ere the towers were built or their tale begun 
Rang all these rocks with clangor of trumpets loud 
calling. 
With hosts in mad conflict, with victory won. 
In these ways, where the bland benediction of sun- 
light is sleeping. 
The races unknown, beyond legend or name. 
Slew and were slain, knew triumph and glory and 
weeping. 
Made moaning or joy in their own day of fame. 

67 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 

Where sunken and sunless and soundless the dim 
secrets slumber 
In backward abysms unpierced of our sight 
The long generations and tribe after tribe without 
number 
Crept onward as we from night unto night. 
Strange races of men through cycles of Time old 
and hoary, 
Not a trace to us leaving save trace of the beast. 
Here played their poor little part, told out their 
swift story. 
Strutted and fretted, chased shadows and ceased. 



Not a tear, not a sigh, not a heart that ever has 
broken 
In the tales that we know of this highway of men. 
Not a song that whispered of grieving, a sorrow 
unspoken, 
Has a note of despair unknowable then ; 
Whatever of love or of hope may cheer men or 
lighten. 
Whatever of toil, or of aim high or low. 
What distant fantastical dreams may darken or 
brighten 
Were known of these also ages ago. 

68 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 

Did they think, being mutable men, to them it 
was given 
The secrets of whither and whence to lay bare ? 
Did the priests the dim veil unto them show rent 
and riven ; 
Did king-craft and priest-craft make murky their 
air? 
But they lived, and they loved, knew child-love and 
all the swift anguish 
When heart-stricken love of love is bereft, 
Saw the heads that they loved wax weary, fade 
slowly and languish. 
And the darkening way over those that were left. 

There were Caesars likewise of these ; there was 
striving and straining. 
There were hearts that were stirred to set all on 
a cast ; 
The same luring lights that the promise upheld of 
attaining 
To the same barren reefs led ever at last ; 
Achievement that mocks and strife that is all un- 
availing. 
Empty pursuing, hands grasping at naught, 
The strength of the strong on his weaker brother 
prevailing 
And sloth ever winning what labor had wrought. 

69 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk. 

And the same lies blasted, in like dense darkness 
groping, 
Deluded, deserted, whirled down the dark way. 
These, too, struggled on, beset with vain fearing 
and hoping. 
Built their own crumbling towers, thought their 
own fleeting day 
To be great in the tale of the years that careless 
and scornful 
Swept utterly them and their works from the earth. 
Not a memory leaving or echo of bright days or 
mournful. 
Thoughts, aspirations, sorrows or mirth. 

And of us, as of them, the destinate years, that care 
not 
For men more than seas in their ebb or their flow. 
Such dim speculations shall leave as these that 
bear not 
A trace of a name or a deed here below ; 
An airy tradition, a dream to the times that come 
after. 
The works and the woes, the striving and pain, 
A gathering of store for naught but the future's grim 
laughter. 
For the winds and the suns to scatter again. 

JO 



The Rhone Valley at Leuk, 

While the same stars beckon, the same mellifluous 
voices, 
From the glittering heights sing low, sing soft. 
As the river's song in her ancient course rejoices, 

As the soul of the mountain is singing aloft. 
When her beautiful face in the light of the sunset 
seems living. 
Uplifted and radiant, turned to the west, 
Listening she seems to the sound of her own song 
giving 
Forever to earth the promise of rest. 




71 




IMPRESSIONS. 

/. Shrewsbury River. 

Ashen green and listless sea smoke gray, 

Dun yellow here and there on spits of sand, 
And lone gulls wheeling on their viewless way ; 

Slow reaching mists upon the unshadowed land. 
And foamy ridges caught in shoreward reeds 
Where these mad currents run like startled steeds — 

Outside the beach with narrow verge 

Booms leaden ocean's sullen surge. 



2. From Brooklyn Bridge. 

Swung in the air upon the midmost span. 

Just at the gray and purple death of day. 
While underneath the whirling currents ran 
And tenuous mists between the far shores lay, 
I saw above me and below 
The shadowy ships unnoted go, 

72 



Imp 



r ess tons. 



And hidden somewhere in the filmy screen 
The giant-hearted city throbbed unseen 
With busy murmur far away and low. 
And faint lamps like an archipelago. 

At once then from the dark pier's utmost head 
There came a sparkle and then a gleam of light 

That grew into a steady coal of red — 
A glowing ruby on the breast of night ; 
And now I traced with this for guide 
The whole course of the river's tide : 
By what dim shores, along the island's lea, 
By golden sands into the heaving sea ; 
I saw the great piles towering to the clouds. 
The belfry, and the streets with restless crowds. 



J. Daubensee in the Gemmi Pass. 

Lifeless — for what life should flutter here ? 

Through this silence if a wing might glisten. 
Leaves might rustle or the wind walk clear. 

Would the startled sense not stop to listen; 
Would not sight be sound to famished ear ? 

Hardly even airiest echo finds 

Covert in these caverns, hardly winds 
Faintest horn across their shadows drear. 



73 



Impressions, 

Bleak and gray and bare the billows lie. 
Wave on wave of stony sea unbreaking ; 

Here a dreaming desert, there a sky 

Darkling on those depths where sleeps unwaking 

Water wan as stirless wastes near by. 

Where the wind will never bend to trace 
Lightest smile upon the brooding face — 

Never ripple curl and break and die. 

Not for suns was made this soundless deep. 

Not for suns and stars to lie reflected. 
Here shall never foam-bow bend or leap, 

Moonlight silver, cloud-shade pass dejected; 
From its banks no marish-reeds shall peep, 

Shallows shiver or the wind-flower bloom; 

Laughter lightens not the dusky gloom 
Nor any noon shall stir its sombre sleep. 

From this height what fiend of wrath or fear. 
Gazing on some space of turbid ocean. 

Stretched his hand and saw the surges rear, 
Stricken at his word from aimless motion, 

Rocks whose bastions, sullen now and sere. 
Chill the heart with such a force of woe 
As the master's deathless pages show 

Speechless in the heavy heart of Lear ? 

74 



Impressions, 

^. The English Channel. 

Wan cliffs that watch with wrinkled changeless faces 
The wide-winged ships forever pass and pass. 

Cliffs on whose tops the wind with restless paces 
Treads the thin cincture of the tawny grass ; 

Beneath, a sombre reach of leaden deep 

Writ strangely o'er with stranger tides that sweep 
Round those lean scythes of rock await for ships 
About the pulsing waters' haggard lips. 

The sea-mews circle and the slim mists hover. 
The low dull clouds roll on their sullen way, 

Winds moan, waves rise and long gray shadows cover 
Faint foreland, drooping down, and smileless bay; 

And grim lone warder isles by whose piled foam 

The sweet-souled Raleigh sought his thankless home. 
The pirate Drake fared on his sordid quest, 
The Pilgrim steered stout-hearted for the west. 




1^ 




ACHIEVEMENT. 

In the vast mid-sea, with tireless toil and care, 
The wind has built of clearest chrysoprase. 

Of greenest emerald and of topaz rare, 

A girdled tower to guard untrodden ways. 

And on the summit that the sun hath crowned 
Gleam brighter buds than ever garden grew. 

Lovelier lilies than have blessed the ground. 
Whiter roses than have thanked the dew. 

And at a breath the buds burst forth in bloom. 
And at a breath the stately tower falls. 

No leaf is left nor any chance perfume. 

Nor trace of wonder of the gleaming walls. 

76 




THE OLD HOUSE AT WARAMAUG. 

Of what use are the odors of the birch and piney 
thicket 
That blow all day through the deserted rooms ? 
Of what use is the rose that climbs atop the 
mouldering wicket. 
Loading the idle air with its perfumes ? 
For no one hears the piping of the bluebird soft 
and mellow 
Nor nightly whistle of the whippoorwill : 
And there is none to mark what pools of daisies, 
white and yellow. 
Break on the barren bases of the hill. 



n 



The Old House at Waramaug, 

A brooding silence as of men long perished and 
forgotten 
Dwells in the empty chambers' musty breath ; 
The tapping of the woodpecker upon the timbers 
rotten 
Sounds through the echoing house the doom of 
death. 
And where are now the faces that belike with eager 
fancies 
Have gazed from out these windows on this scene ? 
Where are the children that in sport and merry 
dances 
Have worn with tireless feet the dooryard green? 
I seem to see on door and lintel still the little fingers 
That tore black cherries from the drooping bough ; 
A faery echo of their thrilling mirth and laughter 
lingers — 
Voices that in the grave are silent now. 



The sound of war has echoed up and down these 
quiet valleys, 
And when soul-trying days were big with fate 
From out this door the farmer has gone forth to 
patriot rallies, 
Leaving a woman's heart to weep and wait. 

78 



The Old House at Waramaug, 

And all life's round, from dawn to dark, has filled 
its tangled history 
Within the circuit of these narrow walls : 
The living face upon the dead one laid — the pain 
and mystery. 
And sobbing voices through the darkened halls. 



Those tears are dried now; eyes they dimmed, 
beyond the misty curtain 
Ceased long ago to heed of grief or mirth ; 
One tale of men and dwellings! Lo! this home 
with doom as certain 
Sinks back again within the arms of Earth. 
Has everything beneath the sun its purpose and its 
mission. 
In an unending chain predestined place ? 
Or happens it by chance that unto this or that 
condition 
It serves the uses of a feeble race ? 




LAS GUASIMAS. 

June 26 J 1 8^8. 

We saw them in the streets go to and fro 

As other men, 
The godHke strength beneath the careless show 

Unnoted then; 
Unseen the faith, the fervor undefined, 
Unspoken love that faith and flag enshrined 

And self resigned. 

One was a man unknown, of sturdy frame, 

Who toiled for bread ; 
One was a fair-faced youth who bore the name 

Of patriot dead ; 
But, brothers all, fought onward side by side 
For one great cause in the rush of that fierce tide. 

And brothers — died. 

And not as men commanded or for hire 

They did and dared ; 
Serene they went, as martyrs to the fire 

Their bosoms bared; 
To lift a fallen race they fought the fight. 
They kept the faith, they brought fair freedom's light,. 

And scattered night. 

80 



Las Guasimas, 

Daybreak in Cuba ! and a light that ran 

The world around. 
And trumpets sounding, "Where man died for man 

Is holy ground ! " 
The light of the republic ! Where it flies 
Old bat-like wrongs take flight, oppression dies. 

And men arise. 

We in that new day's dawn-glow, here above 

Their sacred dust. 
Wreathe now with hope that conquers tears, with love 

And new-sprung trust ; 
The victor's laurel for a duty done, 
A people freed, a reign of love begun, 

A land made one. 

These to their rest the while the vibrant voice 

Of ages calls : 
" Oh, mother of heroic men, rejoice 

Within thy walls ! 
A legion of such sons from sea to sea 
Stand forth, stern-browed, strong armed, to keep thee 
free. 

Or die with thee ! " 



8i 




THE FLEET AT SANTIAGO. 

July J, i8g8. 

The heart leaps with the pride of their story. 

Predestinate lords of the sea ! 
They are heirs of the flag and its glory, 

They are sons of the soil it keeps free ; 
For their deeds the serene exaltation 

Of a cause that was stained with no shame, 
For their dead the proud tears of a nation, 

Their fame shall endure with its fame. 



The fervor that grim, unrelenting, 

The founders in homespun had fired. 
With blood the free compact cementing. 

Was the flame that their souls had inspired. 
They were sons of the dark tribulations. 

Of the perilous days of the birth 
Of a nation sprung free among nations, 

A new hope to the children of earth ! 

82 



The Fleet at Santiago, 

They were nerved by the old deeds of daring, 

Every tale of Decatur they knew, 
Every ship that, the bright banner bearing. 

Shot to keep it afloat in the blue ; 
They were spurred by the splendor undying 

Of Somers' fierce fling in the bay. 
And the watchword that Lawrence died crying. 

And of Cushing's calm courage were they. 

By the echo of guns at whose thunder 

Old monarchies crumbled and fell. 
When the war ships were shattered asunder 

And their pennants went down in the swell ; 
By the strength of the race that, unfearing, 

Faces death till the death of the last. 
Or has sunk with the fierce Saxon cheering. 

Its colors still nailed to the mast — 

So they fought — and the stern race immortal 

Of Cromwell and Hampton and Penn 
Has thrown open another closed portal. 

Stricken chains from a new race of men. 
So they fought, so they won, so above them 

Blazed the light of a consecrate aim ; 
Empty words ! Who may tell how we love them. 

How we thrill with the joy of their fame ! 

83 




THE LAST OF THE ARMADA. 

1^88— i8g8. 

The slow revolving wheel 
Brings round her doom that was the nation's pest. 
Thunder that shook the sturdy English keel, 
Thunder that threatened from the toppling crest 
When torn clouds whirled across the watery West 
And swept her great fleet in a tangled reel, 
Rising and gathering these three hundred years, 
Falls and scatters to the dust 
The structure built of blood and lust, 
Cemented with men's tears. 



Behold that work is done ! 
No brighter for the wide world was the flash 

84 



The Last of the Armada, 

On England's seas of England's earliest gun, 
Nor sweeter sang the tempest's hollow clash 
Nor dearer was the swinging of its lash, 
Since there, as here, the centuries' cause was one. 
As one still smoulders in the Viking's race 
The fervor of the sea that wakes 
When from the sloping billow breaks 
The sea salt in the face. 

The score is even now ; 
Nor ours, but that great grudge of all mankind 
For her that ever bore against the brow 
Of man enslaved the brand, and for his mind 
The shackles ; she that made his young eyes blind. 
And fed his soul with falsehood of her vow ; 
Whose pall of plagues and curses weft made way 

When through the May-tide morning's smoke 

Guns of the later Howard woke 
The thunders of the bay. 

They might not co-exist. 
These twain — man's sign of hope and this the worst 
Of the signs of darkness, hope's antagonist. 
The sword was in their hands whose sires had first 
Panted for freedom with a quenchless thirst ; 
The sun was on their brows her lips had kissed 

85 



The Last of the Armada, 

Before all others ; peace might easier be 
In sea-tides when a great wind blows 
Than peace between fair freedom's foes 
And sons she had set free. 

Time takes his bright bead-roll 
Of men heroic — all that ever smote 
The tyrant, from that lonely silent soul 
That beat her down by many a lowland moat, 
And Bolivar with sword across her throat, 
Great name by name along the splendid scroll 
To him that died ere Cuba's morning came ; 
Then writes across the golden lines: 
"A Wrong Set Right at Last," and signs 
Our brave old Admiral's name ! 

For as one figure rose 
With masterful stern brow and clearest eyes 
To lead and light the earlier band whose blows 
First made her tremble, in these brighter skies, 
Fulfilled of promise, men have seen arise 
One destined for the weary struggle's close 
To whom the years looked forward, who should bring 

To lands within her shadow day ; 

As after darkest Winter May 

Comes with the blossomed Spring. 

86 



The Last oj the Armada. 

Not that these dead are dead — 
Nay, never that — the rising of the heart 
And throbbing; nor only for the sounding tread 
Of arms triumphant ; but the mighty part 
Fate has ordained us that the bitter smart 
Of far mankind, throne-bound and bHndly led. 
Should be our healing; ours to spread afar 
The rule of man for rule of kings. 
And further on her viewless wings 
The future's unswayed star. 

Not for ourselves alone. 
Not for ourselves, with narrow brow of care, 
The sacred fire that freed, the light that shone. 
The heritage of hope and faith we share ; 
Not ours to hoard and hide, but ours to bear 
Wherever dawn is late or man makes moan : 
Lo! with this day a broader vision, gift 

Beyond all gifts of battle, spread 

Through doubts that died and fears that fled, 
An ever-widening rift ! 




87 




THE FIFTEENTH OF FEBRUARY. 

i8()8—i8gg. 

Is it not well, my brethren ? They whose sleep 

Beneath the nodding palm, 
Where the strong currents of the trade wind sweep. 

Is measureless and calm. 
If from those loyal lips, now one year dumb. 
One word across the heaving seas might come. 

What other word 
Than this should hail the morning ? Might they know 
That where the tides past grim Cabanas flow 
The mirrored glories of their banner glow, 

What other cheer be heard ? 



88 



The Fifteenth of February, 

Is it not well — the surer, stronger sight 

And for that pain and shame 
The sense of all things slowly set aright 

Unto a destined aim ? 
That gazing where beyond our utmost dreams 
The way new broken through the darkness gleams. 

Fresh wreaths we bring, 
And heeding all that these with life have bought. 
What wondrous things the circling months have 

wrought, 
For these held dear in all a nation's thought 

"Pro patria mori" sing. 



Is it not well ? Pro patria mori ! Yea, 

For her dear sake no less 
Than those that on some hard-fought glorious day 

Fall in the strife and stress. 
Though not as Anglo-Saxons love to go, 
Stern-set, hard-gripped, with answering blow for 
blow — 

Not thus they died — 
Yet not without such sacrifice might be 
Full wrought the perfect work of Liberty, 
Nor we the children of her first-born see 

Her sun-lit wings spread wide. 

89 



The Fifteenth of February, 

Is it not well ? Lo, where the shade was cast 

Of out-worn kingly sway 
To gloom the Future with a blighted Past, 

That curse is swept away ; 
And now above the fading dark arise 
New constellations in the glittering skies ; 

And in our ears, 
That heard but now the universal groan. 
The prison shot and tortured prisoner's moan. 
The chorus of a people freed is blown 

From the verge of coming years. 

Is it not well that far beyond, below. 

The market's empty strife 
We have made sure what tides of feeling flow 

To make the people's life ? 
How deeply shrined the sacred flag has place 
In all the toiling million-hearted race. 

And at her need 
The youthful giant of the nation wakes. 
Within his hand a disused weapon takes, 
Lays down for her his ready life, or shakes 

The world with deathless deed. 

Is it not well — the hope, as if new born. 
The first of glimmering light. 



90 



The Fifteenth of February, 

The slender herald of the promised morn 

Athwart the ancient night ? 
That comes with healing for her wounded breast 
Of that old East that is the radiant West 

Of times to be ; 
While in her prostrate place as loaded long 
With chains of might and blinded hate and wrong. 
She trembles at the first heard morning song 

From across the morning sea ? 

Is it not well, my brethren ? There is made 

One song through all the land ; 
Before one light old doubts and shadows fade. 

With old lines drawn in sand. 
The past lies dead. New sight, a broader view. 
For the Republic sees a purpose new 

Of boundless scope. 
While like a sun that burns with clearer flame 
Sweeps rising through the sky her spotless fame. 
And lights a land that knows one love, one aim. 

One flag, one faith, one hope. 




91 




BOER AND BRITON. 

Lo, in these forlornest limits, back to rock, 
A hunted thing and followed far for prey. 

Saddest offspring of the Silent One's great stock. 
He, shorn of hope, turns sullenly at bay. 

All the suns and seas have changed not, all the years 
Have not made tame 

Iron of that ancient blood that found no fears 
In Alva's name. 

Here as by the Northland meadows stands the race 

Sternly grappled with the stronger foeman, face to face. 



92 



Boer and Briton, 

Here is never dike to open and no wave 

To beat oppression down with friendly flood ; 
Hither comes no Sidney, gallant heart and brave. 
With purest sword that shed a tyrant's blood ; 
Sons of her that in the world's great midnight shed 

The earliest light, 
Now by all that world forgotten and deserted 

She once made bright, 
Sons of those that fell by Leyden, sword in hand — 
These shall well remember how to die for native 
land. 

She that heard not, cared not, when arose the cry 

From lips made bloody by the Turkish heel ; 
She that with turned head and drawn-back skirts 
went by 
When Crete from out her wound would pluck 
the steel ; 
She that smugly psalmed the sweets of peace to 
others 

And force abhorred — 
This is she that now upon her weakest brothers 

Sends fire and sword. 
Ere her siren song had ceased or her words grown 

cold. 
Warring for some acres and a little paltry gold. 

93 



Boer and Briton, 

She that might have crowned the century's closing 
hour 
Aglow like morning with the signs of peace ; 
She that might have cleansed her sumless sins of 
power 
And blown the trump that bids all wars to cease — 
She the flag has stained a deeper crimson, red 

With blood before ; 
She has called a newer curse upon her head, 

Curse-bowed of yore ; 
She, still true to shame's traditions, here has made 
Once again the roar of cannon " for the sake of 
trade!" 

"Progress," she will call it when the bullet sings 

Across the barren furrow's trampled track ; 
"Progress" march of torch and axe and flame that 
flings 
For light abroad the Old World's shadow back ; 
"Progress" when the farmer Wrath goes forth and 
sows 

His direst seed. 
When about her throat the weaker nation knows 

The hands of greed; 
Shall we call it "progress" when this bitter root 
Bears of fierce undying hatred all its fatal fruit ? 

94 



Boer and Briton, 

Blazon victories on these pigmies, you have need, 

Sing songs of triumph, make the utmost air 
Echo vi^ith the praise of this your gallant deed 

Where thousands bearded tw^enty in their lair. 
Shouting streets are not the future, loud acclaim 

Will not avail 
When its sure relentless finger points to shame 

This wretched tale ; 
All your songs will turn not back the hands that 

write 
This the crime that makes fair Poland's murder all 
but white. 




95 




NIKOLSON'S NEK. 

Nataly Oct. jo, i8gg. 

Ho, ancient bully, beaten to your knees. 

Do you know her eyes that flame, her hands that 
smite ? 

Whose wrathful face and wide smooth brows 
and white 
And dented shield from countless fields like these 
Gleamed fierce and fair among the rocks and trees 

On Concord road ? Who through the weary night 

Burned, though beclouded, till from Yorktown's 
height 
She crowned a people with their liberties ? 
Yea, fear her ! This is she in whose sure scrolls 

Is writ, blood-red, the record of your crime — 
By what wrecked nations and what wretched souls. 

What tears, what hate, what groveling and grime 
Your rising — and the very tide that rolls 

To hurl you headlong on the sands of Time ! 

96 




BEFORE A GREUZE. 

Museum of the Louvre. 

Which shall I say is fairer — this face of thine, 
With all its limpid lights and wondrous ways. 

Its sudden flash of soul turned full on mine, 
Its hints of roses and its dreams of days 
Faint flushed like morning in a summer haze. 

Its luminous depths of shadowy eyes that shine 

With fleeting fires and fervors all divine ? 

Or that calm changeless face his hand long dead 
Wrought to the flying music of his dream. 

When all the fairy flutes and trumpets bred. 
With roseate glory and with purple beam, 
A vision of the springtime all agleam 

Where she went lowly, by her fancies led. 

And one pure sunbeam crowned upon her head ? 

97 



Before a Greuze, 

From these mute moveless lips, I know, I know. 
Shall never speech nor song nor sigh arise ; 

Whatever whispers at these gates may grow 
I shall not have one answer at these eyes; 
There is no colder star in any skies. 

Nor less responsive when the wind breathes low 

That other Jungfrau's forehead wreathed in snow. 

And thou, the rosy sweet antithesis. 

Stand thou thus silent while my soul takes 
note: 

The ripe red lips that seem carved thus to kiss. 
The warm dark hair about thy head afloat. 
The slender curve of dainty chin and throat. 

The memories of thy blameless mirth and bliss — 

What now to these is beauty chill like this ? 

Alas this parchment ! was it made to write 
The lines thereon no wit may turn away ? 

I search and find no scripture there tonight ; 
Perchance the penman lingers till the day — 
That grim old penman, busy, bent and gray, 

Who finds soft cheeks like these, aflush and bright. 

And leaves them scored and scribbled with his 
might. 

98 



Before a Greuze, 

Grief is his word, and parting, and salt tears, 
The path thick set with flowers where it begins 

And paved with broken hopes by weary years. 
With broken wings of phantom faiths and sins 
And tiresome thoughts of the vanished goal none 
wins, 

The circling chase that never center nears, 

And over all the tale of nameless fears. 



But here his hand turns back ; he hath no power 
To mar or maim upon this other face. 

Or stain this snow with evil; hour by hour 

And year by year Time keeps his wonted pace, 
Yet if with aged eyes grown dim this place 

I seek, with all joys else grown sere and sour, 

I shall not find one blight on this fair flower. 

Ah child, would that some power there were to 
keeo 
Thy bud half-opened perfect in its glow; 

That some strange dew might drop on thee and steep 
Thy beauty with its essence till the slow 
Remorseless hand should fail or traceless go. 

That change might dwell as light on thee as sleep 

And these dark eyes might never droop to weep ! 

LofC. 

99 



Before a Greuze, 

Lo now, the lily that seems like to thee, 

Lo now, the snowdrift stainless as thou art — 

Lo now, the bloom grown gray on the apple tree. 
The curled sad lily leaves torn far apart. 
The dull world's dust blown on the snowdrift's 
heart ; 

Shall all this woeful change and canker be 

And this wan penman leave thy beauty free ? 

So now I turn me to this canvas, where 

With smile that fleets not, rose that shall not fade, 

Looks out through tearless eyes my lady fair. 
Ah saint, before thy feet my shrine is made. 
Within thy little hands my heart is laid. 

And like the matchless minstrel in his prayer 

Behold my soul lies tangled in thy hair. 




lOO 




SEVEN SONNETS TO JULIA MARLOWE. 

The Art. 

It is not only sheer similitude, 

Nor recitation of the undying line ; 

Not formal show nor accurate design. 
With question of the poet's occult mood. 
The hand upon the enchanted harp is rude. 

Unskilful lingers seeking to define 

Ethereal music in the thought divine. 
When art and mechanism are at feud. 

For true art takes small heed of surface things ; 

Far from the plains where streams untroubled roll 
It circles on the summits where the springs 

Burst storm-lashed with the passion of the soul. 
Sustained and poised upon two outstretched wings — 

The Truth, and Intellectual Control. 



lOI 



Seven Sonnets to Julia Marlowe, 



'The Artist. 

Yet more ; this colder reason bravely flies, 

And fails and falters ; still the soul saith naught 
Of subtler feelings ; shall we then take thought 

Of all that sways us ? Come where Juliet lies 

Calm after tempest, or cold Scottish skies 

Fade over Mary, where the snare has caught 
A boy's soul singing, or with laughter fraught 

Through Arden trips the trim maid in disguise — 

Ah, not with calmly reasoned why or how 

We shall make count of ways elusive, whence 
The mind, it may be in its own despite. 
Finds dreamed-of cloudland all made living! Now 
Remains clear vision seen with surer sense. 
Whereof a part is loveliness, part light. 



I02 



Seven Sonnets to yulia Marlowe, 



Juliet. 

It was not summer's ripening breath that blew 
With perfumed eddies round and round the close. 
To charm from out the bud the perfect rose 

Of love that midst the dead leaves sweetly grew. 

But as its half-oped folds were touched with dew 
The blinded gardener Fate, that never knows 
If weed or lily in his garden grows, 

Across the silken sheath his sickle drew. 

It died and dies not ; ere the years had shed 
Their sad forgetful dust above its head 

The soul of deathless life was breathed from him 
Whose word lives ever ; as for us again 
In you this flower blossoms love and pain 

Beheld through eyes that tears have made all dim. 



103 



Seven Sonnets to yulia Mar/owe. 



Beatrice. 

She will not love, not she — nay. Love, depart — 
She is love-proof and panoplied in mirth 
By that same star that danced above her birth ; 

So says she. At the word Love's puny dart 

A way finds through wit's armor to her heart. 
She bravely jests of poor men made of earth 
The while the love she says is nothing worth 

Becomes her master. So transcends your art. 

"We'll not be moved," we say. "Why should we 
care 
For these old tales of triumph or distress. 

And woes of folk that long have passed away?'* 
And then — a word — the smile — the rippling hair. 
Or but the far-off rustle of your dress, 
And the old thraldom reasserts its sway. 



104 



Seven Sonnets to yulia Marlowe. 



Viola. 

" Poor lady, she were better love a dream ! " 
Olivia's fate we fathom by our own ; 
Yet waver whether dreams that thus are shown 

Or cold sun-light be clearer ; elusive seem 

The gliding figure and the face, the gleam 
Of tears or laughter in her eyes, the tone 
So soft she speaks in sometimes, when unknown 

She loves by stealth or has her joy supreme. 

Yea, like a dream may all be when we muse 
Hereafter — all but of the tender maid 

This portrait. Like the faces of our youth. 
That with shut eyes we see and cannot lose, 
It lingers — Time nor Change may never fade 
Its perfect beauty, which is perfect truth. 



105 



Seven Sonnets to yulia Marlowe, 



Rosalind. 

From out the pages of the Master's book — 
Doublet and hose new russet Hke the morn, 
A spear within her slim white fingers borne — 

Comes now the very Rosalind that took 

Captive his fancy ; so in forest nook 

He dreamed her, going past the flowered thorn. 
All woman heart, all love in spite of scorn 

For love, soothly pretended; as we look 

A world of toil and tangled trouble fades; 
As if to some Elizabethan seer 

Dim Elfland comes again : and, straying, we, 
Forgetful in its fairy lights and shades, 
A sound as of a harp long silent hear ; 
A face as of a long-sought singer see. 



1 06 



Seven Sonnets to yuiia Marlowe, 



Chatterton, 

He went his way to rest with weary feet. 

Home-turning as one would that long had strayed 
In stoniest pathways, for his love repaid 

With mocking laughter, for his singing sweet 

With fast-shut door and wind-swept echoing street. 
Tired eyes and hopeless heart to the great shade 
Crept beaten back at last but unafraid. 

And stilled were wings for a sodden world too fleet. 

He went his way; and we, in whose charmed ears 
Live still the sound and throbbing of his song, 

But for this picture of his darkening years 

Might nothing know how bruised and baffled long 

His soul soared singing to the brightest spheres 
From that salt gulf of bitterness and wrong. 



107 




TO PHILIP MASSINGER, "A STRANGER/* 

{In the Chancel of Old St. Saviour s, Southwark.) 

Alone thy spirit went, thy thoughts alone, 

Scorner of courts and pomps and tinsel kings. 
Watchman of morning and the light that brings 

Freedom to men, crushing of tyrant's throne. 

And retribution for the people's moan ! 

Beneath the shadow of the brooding wings 
In gloom and sorrow were thy wanderings. 

And men to him that loved them gave — this stone; 

But now to us no more ** a stranger " thou; 

From lands beyond thy dreaming come acclaim 
And hail of "Brother," after all these years — 
** Brother and seer! " Sweet face and mournful brow 
Are known and loved of all men, as thy name 
And sad soul-song and story, read through tears. 

io8 




SWITZERLAND. 

Six hundred years she has held up the light. 
Six hundred years her loveliest of all faces. 
Transfigured, £rm and fair above the spaces 

Abyssmal where the melancholy blight 

Of thrones and priests hangs Hke a dawnless night 
That all men's souls embitters or abases. 
Has shone a sign and symbol to all races 

That dared or hoped a king or wrong to smite. 

She has shone on, a signal of such splendor, 
As shine her mountain heads beneath her sun. 

While crowns and mitres darken nor defend her. 
Nor any stain makes dim her proud deeds done; 

The ancient thongs may neither bind nor bend her. 
To whom her liberty and life are one. 



109 




^-.J.. 



BEETHOVEN, OP. 13. 



^^^ 



He saw two visions of the solemn deep 

Tone-built before him — here drives down the gale 
A battered wreck of ship or soul with sail 

Storm-sundered, flung from darkling steep to steep; 

Green wrath of gloomy hollows, waves that leap 
To pluck souls deathwards, lips and faces pale 
And sounds of weeping, and behind a veil 

Of thickening storm-clouds all fair lights asleep. 

The other showed a haven fringed with green, 
A white-armed bay with stirless depths between. 
On whose unruffled purple, won at last, 
The latest sunset from beyond the bar. 
Where touched with gold the baffled breakers are, 
A blessing beams on doubts and dangers past. 



1 10 




BENEFICENCE. 

So all this golden splendor is for man ; 
For him alone the azure of the skies, 
For him the temples of the clouds arise. 

The great trees rear their solemn arch and span. 

The breeze is sent alone his cheeks to fan, 
And morning, with its ever fresh surprise, 
Designed alone to please his wondering eyes. 

That he may know the greatness of the plan. 

But cycles ere man came the sunshine grew 

Into this rosy softness on the hills. 
And just such dreamy breaths of Summer olew. 

Whose thymy fragrance from the woodside fills 
These portals — and the blue-bells in the woods 

Still bloomed in Cenozoic solitudes. 



1 1 1 




"THE SLEEPLESS SOUL." 

Sl Mary Redcliffe Churchy Bristol. 

Lost face that in thy songs we fain had sought. 
Face starward turned or with wild visions glowing ; 
Head bowed intent when through the transept 
flowing 

Came solemn trumpet strains with old dreams fraught ; 

Eyes in whose depths the restless soul-fires wrought, 
And brow left bare by careless locks back flowing — 
These, faded long from mortal sight or knowing, 

Puzzle with fleeting forms our gainless thought. 
Yet harken ! Now when sunset shadows creep 
Down the dim chancel and the day winds sleep. 

Silver and sure a voice as of one singing, 

Attuned of hawthorn and the blossomed May, 
Of shepster maidens and the midnight fay, 

Dawns on the breathless darkness, clearly ringing. 



I 12 




THE EMPRESS THEODORA. 

[Benjamin-Constant.) 

Strange reds and purples shine, shot through and 
through 
The robe that round her lithe slim body clings. 
Strange like the red that subtly burns and stings 

One looking past the clear untroubled dew 

Of proud wide eyes that take the world in view 
Into her soul, with soiled and weary wings. 
Steeped in a furnace of all scarlet things, 

Sick with sin's perfume and hot even hue. 

Thy little feet hard pressed against the floor. 
The shapely sweet erect imperial head, 
Thine incense and thy beauty round thee shed. 
That with more gazing grows and steals the more — 
Nay, what are these? About thee and before 

Crowd shapes of thine old years, and these — all 
red ! 

Municipal Museum^ Amsterdam. 



in 




FRUITION. 

What soil but bitter soil of pain may grow 
The perfect petals of immortal song. 
Whose seed, sown sure by some hot hate of wrong,, 

Lies in a lap more lifeless still than snow 

Except a grief has made the glebe-land glow. 

And tears that fell unheard the whole night long 
Drop as the dews that make the sweet stems strong 

And odorous blooms athwart the dawn to blow ? 

Yea, note what strange and soaring rhapsody 

Floats through the boyish Rowley's lonely years. 

What vision of the vast eternity 

Before the sightless Milton's eyes uprears. 

What wild sad strains of sorrow's ecstacy 

There by the Thames the last great singer hears! 



114 




CHANGE. 

Another face at her old window pane 

Where still her little vines and roses grow — 
And all the glories of the sunset glow 

Crimson the far-spun wrack for me in vain. 

Change has its will through tides of loss and gain. 
But I — I did not think that I should know 

Another face at her old window pane 

Where still her little vines and roses grow. 

The same old house, the same strait shaded lane, 
The same grey apple trees set in a row — 
Here is no place, O soul, arise and go. 

For there looks forth, while all dear memories wane. 

Another face at her old window pane. 



115 




MARCH. 

When through the woods March as a huntsman goes 
With brazen bugle at his tireless lips, 

And all the beaten hillside while he blows 
Crackles with echoes of his snapping whips 
And clatter of the spear about his hips, 

Before the redbreast shows a whirling wing 
The smallest buds peer on the lilac tips 

And blackbirds chide the tardy march of Spring. 



Then with impatient steps, ere evening glows, 
My lady from her pearly covert slips 

Made in the hollow hills that no man knows. 
And fast beneath the humming boughs she trips 

ii6 



March. 

All rosy to her slender finger tips. 
She harkens where the hunting bugles sing 

Yet stops to note how frost the red bud nips 
And blackbirds chide the tardy march of Spring. 

A chanson from her flying footsteps grows, 
A woven thing of winter's swift eclipse. 

Of coming woodbine in the odorous close, 
Of scents and sounds among the clover strips 
And one wee stream that down a green rock drips. 

It is for her the joyous birches fling 

Their arms abroad, his head the grey oak dips. 

And blackbirds chide the tardy march of Spring. 

Ah, loiterer, leave thy musty tomes and scrips 

For sharp red boughs, and brakes where trumpets 
ring; 

My lady waits, the keen air stings and snips. 

And blackbirds chide the tardy march of Spring. 




117 



HELVETIA. 

Ah land of greenest vales and stainless snow, 

Freedom and all dear things were thine of yore : 
Thine is the soil where all dear flowers grow. 

Clear as the fires that on thy mountains glow, 

Sweet as thy streams, thy fame has gone before. 
Ah land of greenest vales and stainless snow ! 

Thine was the sword that struck the earliest blow. 

The hand that first the tyrant's ensign tore — 
Thine is the soil where all dear flowers grow. 

When night lay hard on other lands below. 

Dawn on thy hills her flight prepared to soar. 
Ah land of greenest vales and stainless snow ! 

Still in the vanguard dost thy standard go. 

Freedom means not the less to thee but more. 
Thine is the soil where all dear flowers grow. 

Speak now, Tell's land, to us that we may know 

What lights shone all thy glorious pathway o'er. 
Ah land of greenest vales and stainless snow. 
Thine is the soil where all dear flowers grow. 

ii8 





ft^^^^^^::> 



Q::> 



v^-'f- et 



THE MUSIC OF MEIRINGEN. 

Asleep beneath the vast bare depths of blue 
The wide green valley is so warm and bright 

That all the flying river takes its hue 

And green seem all the lower shafts of light. 
Full noon is here as calm as any night. 
The wind, the bold-heart lover, will not dare 
To twine his lingers in the wild-flower's hair 

Because one long deep chord forever thrills 
To silence all the wonder of the air — 

The trumpets of the streams among the hills. 

A long cloud slowly drifts the great vault through, 
Like nothing on the earth so soft and slight, 



119 



The Music of Meiringen, 

And at its parting flashes into view, 

With upHft forehead clear and wide and white, 
The goddess from whose helm take instant flight 
The lances of the sun. But not the glare 
Of those bright glittering points that earthward 
bear 

Nor yet her strange and solemn beauty stills 
The strains of that persistent chorus there. 

The trumpets of the streams among the hills. 

At midday in the glen the mad brook's dew 

The leaves impearl, caught in its midmost flight. 

Forlorn while these perennial youth renew 

The grey old castle dreams and dreams upright ; 
And dwarfed beneath measureless dim height 
The little church half hides its dull gray square 
Clasped round by boughs as with a loving care. 

Hark now this music ! How it swells and fills 
All hearts with ecstacy anigh despair. 

The trumpets of the streams among the hills! 

Alas ! the dull cold streets that blink and stare ! 
Ah, Queen of Valleys ! Would I might be where 

With lighter notes of fluting brooks and rills 
Rises that symphony beyond compare. 

The trumpets of the streams among the hills. 

I20 




AT THUN. 

So faint and sweet about the woven trees 

I know at Thun the waves of music beat. 
Alas! I hear no other melodies 
So faint and sweet. 

Across the little lake with glittering feet 

The new moon slips, her shadowy draperies 
Streaming behind her in her swift retreat. 

Now as her last bright glimmerings shine and cease 

I know just how along the lonely street 
One footstep falls like rain on summer seas, 
So faint and sweet. 



121 




ON BARBARA'S BIRTHDAY. 

A-tiptoe on the verge of life's sweet Spring, 

Eager and fain, she stands, 
With three bright pearls upon a golden string 

Held in her rosy hands. 

No lore of all the wise 

Is deeper than her eyes. 

In whose soft radiance lies 
No shade of sorrow's pinions as lakelets mirror skies 

By some rare wisdom that ye shall not know 
She has this gift of grace, 



122 



On Barbara s Birthday, 

To heal each harrowed heart of all its woe 

That looks upon her face ; 

For old Grief may not dare 

To lurk or linger where 

With breath of balmy air 
The Queen puts forth her sceptre and makes the 
darkness fair. 

If joy return like blowing bloom and leaf 

Unto his hand that sows, 
And through the sun to gold of garnered sheaf 

The seed implanted grows, 

In all thy days shall be 

No fruit but joy for thee 

That sowest only glee 
And drivest forth old sorrow as mists drive on 
the sea. 

What shall the fourth pearl's magic mean 

When on its slender strand 
With its illumined fellows, O my queen, 

Strung by thy slender hand? 

So may its tenderest ray 

Light all your widening way 

And all its colors play 
With music shed about you and hope like dawn of day. 

123 




DEAD MUSIC. 

I shall not hear again the notes 

That once beneath her fingers grew. 

What are all strains of warbling throats ? 

I shall not hear again the notes. 

Some tear-touched memory of them floats 
Like dimmest clouds across the blue, 

But I shall not hear again the notes 
That once beneath her fingers grew. 



124 




THE CHIMERA. 

Museum of the Luxembourg. 

He does not care how deep the sharp claws sink. 
While all his eager soul starts from his lips 
With mouth close pressed to her's the draught he 
sips, 

Tip-toe upon a soundless cavern's brink. 

What is before he does not heed nor think. 

Nor how the red blood from his torn side drips; 

He does not care how deep the sharp claws sink 
While all his eager soul starts from his lips. 

The fierce sweet eyes above him flame and blink, 
About his heart one fierce hand grips and grips. 
Dark wings may flutter for his soul's- eclipse 
But while those lips in one long rapture link. 
He does not care how deep the sharp claws sink. 



125 




MEMORIES OF THE RIFFELBERG. 

The shadows of the hills were purple then. 

What would they seem if with bowed head again 
Retracing all the dear dead paths of yore 
Slowly I went where we two went before 

Along the river and up the winding glen ? 

The mists would not seem blue, I think, as when 
Rapt with vain dreams we crept from haunts of men. 
Alone I should not love that splendor more. 
The shadows of the hills. 

The subtle change that passes all our ken 

All sights and sounds of mountain, sea and fen 

Have changed with mine own soul. The river's 

shore 
Is barren grown, harsh all the tuneful roar 
Of streams, and now a darkness comes to pen 
The shadows of the hills. 



126 




DER SILBjERHORN. 

[Bernese Oberland.) 

What god must set it to his lips and blow? 

Some god it is, for in the early morn, 
Before the gold has touched the topmost snow. 

Through far-off vales its great low chords 
borne 

From hill to hill, a flood so broad and deep 

That all the oreads startle from their sleep. 
Hushed now is all the clamor of the streams, 
For rousing from her spell of vanished dreams. 

Where on the sombre couch of night she lies. 
The Jungfrau greets with reawakened gleams 

Day's herald with sweet morning in his eyes. 



are 



127 



Der Silberhorn, 

Strange are the notes, so solemn, sweet and slow, 
As if for death of Nibelung or a Norn, 

Or sightless souls along the vales should go 
Seeking a mate, with heavy steps forlorn ; 
While stifled sighs of other souls that weep 
Rustle like winds from sterile steep to steep. 

She has no care of these whose forehead seems 

Kissed by the child of dawn with faintest leams, 
She has no thought what lost soul lives or dies; 

Of naught but of her boyish love she deems. 
Day's herald with sweet morning in his eyes. 

He has his other music too, I know. 

This god that scatters silence with his horn. 

Note when the sun-flood's golden overflow 

Drenches the lowest rocks the streams have worn. 

How jubilant his chantings then that keep 

The leaves a-tremble through the valleys' sweep; 

How soft when down the western verge the teams 

Aurora loves are cloaked in ruddy steams ! 

But though these were as sweet as her blue skies 

One song of his far dearer she esteems. 

Day's herald with sweet morning in his eyes. 

Sweeter and lighter now the soft strains grow 
As one by one the locks of night are shorn, 

128 



Der Silberhorn, 

The wild black locks in whose damp shades below 
Hour after hour the nymphs enchanted mourn. 
Now carven faces from the shadows creep 
While slowly lapsing down the waveless deep 

The dark subsides before the growing beams. 

Mysterious fires above these lone supremes 

Take up the songs that round her shrine arise. 

And sprite to sprite among the grasses screams, 
" Day's herald with sweet morning in his eyes ! ** 

And next forgotten is the boding woe 

That sounded first half melody, half scorn ; 

And blither notes are his than winds that sow 
The thistle-down or bend the rustling corn. 
Forth from the trump the rippling measures leap 
As prodigal he would his treasures heap. 

Pouring his endless change of joyous themes 

Beyond the valley's emerald extremes ; 

For westward now night's last dim shadow flies. 

And shines, while hill to hill with new light teems. 
Day's herald with sweet morning in his eyes. 

Fly from a world of sordid plots and schemes. 
Where every aim debases or blasphemes. 

O harken ! Full toned at last the great horn cries. 
While half the world from guilt its voice redeems, 

"Day's herald with sweet morning in his eyes!" 



I 29 




CHATTERTON AT BRISTOL. 

Along this lane, green-walled and starred with 
flowers, 
He walked with heart not too benumbed with pain 
To note the depths of green in tree-arched bowers 
Along this lane. 

And like a tethered lark his heart in vain, 
Captive to care that cankers or devours. 
Soared and fell back upon its fated chain. 

White daisies glistening from the fresh June 
showers. 
White hawthorne free as his own soul from stain — 
Could all make bright his fleeting day as ours 
Along this lane ? 



130 




AT WILDERSWYL. 

" How sweet the moonlight sleeps ! " 
I did not know until at Wilderswyl 

How sweet the moonlight sleeps, 

For there above the vast and breathless deeps 
The Jungfrau watches, spotless, stern and still , 
And on that gleaming silver, pure and chill. 

How sweet the moonlight sleeps ! 



3^ 



THE TUNES OF MARCH. 

What songs across the morning red, 
Clear as the air, as crisp and keen, 
Come when the maple buds first spread ? 

The wind pipes hard in the oak long dead. 

The redbreast twitters sharp and clean 
What songs across the morning red? 

For now all soft notes subtly bred 

Deep in his heart as the grass turns green 
Come when the maple buds first spread. 

And with him freed from his frozen bed 

The river hums his banks between 
What songs across the morning red! 

And sprites of flowers by the fairies led 

With a hymn that heralds their radiant queen 
Come when the maple buds first spread. 

Oh, tunes of March, when the frost is fled ! 

Like far off flute and tambourine 
What songs across the morning red 
Come when the maple buds first spread ! 

132 




RINGGENBERG. 

Crumbling, sad, forlorn and strange 
Stands alone the grim grey tower, 

Still defiant towards all Change 

Though forlorn and sad and strange. 

Through its halls the drear winds range. 
Sighing for some sweet lost hour. 

Crumbling, sad, forlorn and strange 
Stands alone the grim grey tower. 



133 




RETROSPECT. 

Dead days and dreams beneath the full white moon 

Come back like ghosts along the silent ways, 
And night winds through the scarce-stirred leaves 
attune 

" Dead days." 

No sunsets on the banks of purple haze, 

No moonrise and no breathless autumn noon 
But some lost strains of memory's music raise. 

Yea, all sweet things the secret burden croon, 

The doves, the waves, the word that childhood 
says. 
The moan of winter and the songs of June — 
" Dead days." 



134 




THE DREAMER. 
I. 

This maid of May with hlac in her hands, 

With half-grown reddish maple in her hair 
Touched with a fire of bronze across its strands. 

And straight slim gown of white — is she not fair ? 

Take now the light winged shoes she's wont to 
wear, 
Their little prints about the meadow streams; 

What, shall not these heal every wound of care? — 
But best, I think, are shadows, clouds and dreams. 



135 



The Dreamer, 

Or take the sunlight on the Autumn lands 

When silent lies the wonder-smitten air 
And every crimson oak-leaf moveless stands 

And round-eyed asters on the hillside stare ; 

Will grief still keep his well-remembered lair ? — 
The symbols all of change, the wise man deems. 

Sad change that hourly smites these wonders rare ; 
But best, I think, are shadows, clouds and dreams. 

Sometimes the frost comes silently and brands 
Forest and brake with shining silver where 

The white young limbs are bound in glittering bands ; 
Then from the east that winds have swept all bare 
The sudden sun strikes with a golden glare 

And myriad jewels blaze with subtle gleams. 

How now? Will never grief thy musings spare? — 

But best, I think, are shadows, clouds and dreams. 

Ah, temptress! Well I know thee singing there. 

For all thy notes no less the wild world seems 
Through leaves and lights to pipe a wild despair ; 

But best, I think, are shadows, clouds and dreams. 



136 



The Dreamer. 



II. 



With shining robes and helmet of new gold 

Say fortune came, and in her outstretched hand 

The sceptre of her power one might behold; 
Say she before thy wondering eyes should stand 
With all her glories at thy sole command 
For but one crooking of thy stubborn knee ; 
Now fresh as foam new blown upon the sea 

She came, and thou — good lack ! how dull and grey 
Would all thy foolish dreaming be to thee! — 

But dreams endure ; all these shall pass away. 

The splendor of the lists, the music rolled 

From silver trumpets and from smiting brand. 

The great fierce cheering throngs that close enfold 
The joyous victor on whose brow the band 
Of laurels twines by all sweet breezes fanned, 
The homeward march with glorious din and glee. 
All dreams to this are poor as poverty ! 

Rise, take thy sword, have part in this great fray. 
And make swift end of fruitless reverie ! — 

But dreams endure ; all these shall pass away. 

Thou seest the world's way, grown now wise as old. 
What ! wilt thou be alone in all the land ? 



13' 



The Dreamer, 

Mark now : here runs with breakers dark and cold 
Time's tide ; the world is as a golden strand 
Whereon the wrecks lie scattered like the sand. 
What boots it such a battered wreck to be ? 
Make of the world a saving shore to lee. 

Have use and profit of thy short-lived day — 
A shadow's shadow seems all this to me. 

But dreams endure; all these shall pass away. 

Ah, harkeners to the world's mad melody. 
Time of your utmost deeds shall take its fee ; 

Of all your works what shall the dead years say ? 
What stronghold buffets back their stern decree? 

But dreams endure; all these shall pass away. 




13' 




MARGUERITE. 

She has no word to say. 
Although she knows a heavy heart is mine. 

She has no word to say. 
But in the wise all-healing childhood's way 
Her little arms about my neck entwine ; 
Nay, while in tender eyes the sweet tears shine 

She has no word to say. 



139 




LAKE MICHIGAN IN JUNE. 

The soft blue water sleeps and sleeps 

Whatever change may pass above. 

Dark still as brooding breast of dove. 
The soft blue water sleeps and sleeps. 
The summer wind-pufF creeps and creeps 

And woos as with the kiss of love, 
But the soft blue water sleeps and sleeps 

Whatever change may pass above. 



140 




TO BARBARA. 

While you fare forth on your gracious way 
You will not know what prayers I pray. 
What songs I sing, nor how arise 
Strange blinding mists before mine eyes. 
Nor how for me the blue turns grey. 

Hard grows the path and drear the day ; 
But you — all things seem blithe and gay. 
You have no sense of sobs or sighs 
While you fare forth. 

What are vain blasts that old hearts fray? 

Or sad vain things that old lips say ? 
Alas, lost face ! Between us lies 
Too much of tears for any ties, 

I know with measureless dismay 
Wiiile you fare forth. 



141 




BENJAMIN HARRISON. 

Full on his forehead fell the expiring light 

Of old wreathed altars where his fathers died. 
While at his back the dull devouring night 
Poured its advancing tide. 

He would the ancient light relume, would fain 
The dear old faith keep still without a blot. 
The flag he fought for scathless of a stain. 
The shield without a spot. 

He sided with the weak and ceaseless strove 

With failing hands against the tyrannous strong ; 
Here was no place for him where unarmed Love 
Is strangled by old Wrong. 

Here was no place for him where Force and Greed 

Upon the sacred fillets lay their hands 
Red from the spoil of stricken souls that bleed 
And wrecks of ruined lands. 



142 



Benjamin Harrison. 

He has won peace at last — the peace that knows 

In dreamless tides no hint of hate or tears. 
And falls where once his dauntless voice arose 
The silence of the years. 

And men walk by and gaze, and wondering ask. 
Now that the white clear-visioned soul is fled[ 
Where is the hand to seize the torch and task 
New fallen from the dead? 

Was all in vain ? Is any word of worth. 

Though winged with truth and shot home to 
the mark, 
If all the answer is this silent earth 

And lost voice in the dark? 

But lost is never living word nor deed. 

As toward great waves unseen the ripple flows. 
As hour by hour, unguessed, the fervent seed 
Up to the sunlight grows. 

The true man's word, though sown in fallow soil 
And fruitless lying many a day and night. 

In its own way, beyond the sower's toil. 
Bursts into deathless light. 
March /^, igoi. 

H3 




IN THE AUTUMN WOODS. 

When the sun, low down, looks red and round 

Across the dreaming Autumn haze. 
And brown leaves tinkle along the ground 

And brown birds pipe in the forest ways, 
When dulled seems every common sound 

To a far-off sense of lost summer days. 

Then the nights are as lovely as the days 
If chance the moon be full and round 

And stainless shines through deserted ways 

Where the boughs are traced on the leaf-strewn 
ground. 

And the winds have cleared the hovering haze. 
Scarcely moving, without a sound. 

And here is music, but never a sound, 
The voiceless requiem of perished days 

And of life that has finished its destined round. 
In the sad-hued trees in the lonely ways 

Sighing and mourning above the ground, 

Wrapped in their mantles of dreaming haze. 

144 



In the Autumn Woods, 

For the strangest tints has this marvelous haze. 
Colors that seem but the echoes of sound, 

Tunes and chords in wonderful ways 

As slowly it drifts the great hill around, 

Red as the songs of summer days. 

Purple as strains of the Autumn ground. 

Sometimes it lies lovingly, close to the ground, 
This lingering lover, the tinted haze. 

Till a stray breeze scatters it round and round. 
Or the noontide frights it up valley ways. 

Where it hushes the lisp of the thin brook's sound 
With a chilling whisper of frost-bound days. 

Ah, slow is the march of the nights and days. 
Crimson or gold on the yellow ground. 

And yet too soon all the tender haze 
Dies when the bugles of winter sound. 

Hark ! from the depths of the hill-top ways 
Ring the first notes of his choral round ! 

Hence, lady ! hark ! round the shadowy ways, 

Through the Autumn haze, on the mournful 
ground. 
The dead leaves sound but of vanished days! 

145 




THE LONG FIGHT. 



I. 

Dreams ! but no dream is this, I know. 

One cause through all the centuries ! Lo! 
The chariot wheels go dripping blood as when 

The chain-bound captives made them slow. 

And gleaming spears, ranged row on row. 
Flashed the imperial blight on souls of men. 

Naught changes but the face and form. 
Not often now, with sword to sharp sword set 
And face to face opposed as sun to storm, 
Man and his carnificial foe are met 
In tense-drawn joy of open conflict. Yet 
Not since the first dead tyrant lay along 
The battle stays between the weak and strong. 
Between the Truth and Wrong. 

146 



The Long Fight, 

II. 

Because one thing has weaker grown. 

Because the shadow of the throne 
Dwells now less darkly in the wide world's breast. 

Because less plain his might is known, 

Or that his sceptre is not shown, 
Think ye old Force is numb and laid to rest ? 

Listen ! For this have heroes striven ? 
This clank of unseen chain, as to his wheel 
The fettered slave goes daily, lashed and driven. 
This sound of hammered hearts like bits of steel. 
This silent sentence wherefrom toilers feel 
The long slow shadow, creeping like a blight. 
Suppress, as some great starless darkness might. 
The sovereign soul of light ? 



III. 

One cause ! For this in dimmer years 
One man put by all doubts and fears. 

Drew sword and smote till in the Southern sun. 
Washed and made bright with many tears. 
Proud and flung far amid its peers. 

His flag flamed on a land made free and one. 
So rose Italia ! But the strife 



147 



The hong Fight, 

That from her heart drove forth the vulture's beak 

Knew never pause with her returning life! 

Men in these pits of darkness turn to seek 

A newer Garibaldi for the weak, 

Whose sword ringed round with light that has not 

waned 
Leaves not the perfect Freedom still ungained. 
The goal half way attained. 



IV. 

For this the blood of saints was shed, 

The long roll of the deathless dead 
For this has light and lustre like the sea. 

From altar fires of old years fled 

The future's portals glimmer red 
With promise of the Freedom yet to be ; 

For by the first bright glorious stain 
Of Persian blood on Grecian sword, and by 
The breast that gathered spears as golden grain. 
The earliest light of morn in Concord's sky. 
And those brave souls that by Colenso lie, 
By all the deeds and daring of the past, 
Reversed, prest on, she goes, or slow or fast. 
To triumph at the last. 

148 



The hong Fight, 

V. 

She knows all dark of bitter days, 
She knows all thorns of stony ways ; 
Of old her lighted fires, before her eyes. 
Lost one by one their sanguine rays, 
And from the temples to her praise 
She saw the citadels of Force arise. 

Defeat ! She hath drunk deep thereof 
And known each smart of it and all the pain. 
And wept for other sons that for her love 
The voiceless darkness dared like these in vain. 
But steadfast through all change of loss and gain. 
From wasted blood heroic and old tears, 
Democracy, this arch of coming years. 
This perfect span, she rears. 

London^ ^^Pretoria Day,*' June 5, igoo. 




149 



Notes. 

Page I. hiierlaketi. 

In the little green park that fronts the main street of Interlaken 
you shall see, on a fair day in summer, men and women seated on the 
benches, gazing rapt, hour after hour, on that most wonderful of all 
things wonderful and most beautiful of all things beautiful, the great 
immaculate sheer front of the Jungfrau, towering between green foot- 
hills. If you should gain the confidence of these obsessed ones they 
might speak to you of strange matters, of the music they hear from 
that awful beauty and gleaming brow, of things she says and dreams 
she inspires. But so many better voices have sung of these mysteries! 

Page 4. Le Triomphe de la Ripublique. 

At the unveiling and dedicating of this magnificent monument and 
fountain in the Place de la Nation, the procession consisted of the 
artisans of Paris in their working clothes and bearing the tools of their 
trades. The significance of this democratic ceremony should not be 
overlooked in contemplating a work so noble, so graceful and so ex- 
pressive of the aspirations, lofty ideals and exquisite aesthetic sense of 
the great French nation. 

Page 9. In the Church of St. Mary Redctiffe, Bristol. 

1 
Thomas Chatterton, born in Bristol, Nov. 20, 1852; committed 

suicide in London, Aug. 25, 1770. The beautiful church of St. Mary 
Redcliflfe, called by Queen Elizabeth the goodliest parish church in all 
England, is, of course, peculiarly associated with his strange career, be- 
ing his boyhood's haunt, the companion of his lonely hours and the 
subject or inspiration of much of his beautiful song. The muniment 
room over the north porch, whence, he said, came the Rowley manu- 
scripts, is still shown to visitors. It is reached by a narrow winding 
stone stairway, up which his feet must have often toiled. The north 
churchyard has a not-over impressive statue of "the marvelous 
boy," but the church itself, forever connected with his name, is his 
truest monument. I would my poor little tribute were fitter of his 
splendid soul. So sad and strange a story and so glorious a singer 
are themes that deserve an abler celebrant, but at least to his unknown 
shrine I have brought a reverent heart. 



Page jS. France! 

President Kruger, of the Transvaal Republic, reached France No- 
vember 23, 1900. The warmth and sincerity of his reception by the 
French people left no room to doubt that the democratic spirit, how- 
ever it may thrive or languish elsewhere, still reigns in France. It is 
inspiring to reflect that the land that did so much at so great a sacri- 
fice to advance the cause of democracy is unshaken in its faith at a time 
of profound and world-wide reaction. 

Page SS- The Rhone Valley at Leuk. 

The road from the head of Lake Geneva to Brieg is lined with the 
melancholy monuments of the wasted efforts and struggles of man. 
The marks of the mediaeval barons are plainest, but records or sugges- 
tions abound of the Crusaders, the northern barbarians, the Romans and 
the earlier emigrants. The lading of rich argosies from the East was 
borne along this international highway, and the Alemanni swarmed here 
when the Roman power was crumbling. It was a great worn path- 
way between east and west and north and south before the Britons 
had heard of Caesar. The center of these reminiscences may be held to 
be at Sion, with its extraordinary castle and church, but the quaint 
mcldering old town of Leuk seems more eloquent of the change and 
passing that characterize the whole region. No one, I think, can con- 
template these remains without an impression of the essentially ridicu- 
lous and evanescent nature of human endeavor. 

I. The Castles and Churches. 

II. The Crusaders. 

III. The Romans and Barbarians. 

IV. The Prehistoric Tribes. 

Page 97. Before a Greuze. 

Jean Baptiste Greuze, the great painter of children's faces, born 
1725, died 1805. One may think that the purity and innocence of child- 
hood were never so feelingly portrayed as he portrayed them. Alas. 
the day! Where is the little American girl with "a Greuze face" 
that moved one afternoon in the Louvre beside the painting of her pro- 
totype? Even now I suppose she has lost something of the angel that 
then looked forth from her eyes! 



Page io8. '■'Philip Massinger, a Stranger.'^ 

The church of St. Saviour, adjoining the Southwark end of Lon- 
don Bridge, should be dear to all Americans for its memories of John 
Harvard and the ancestors of Ralph Waldo Emerson, to all students of 
the English drama for its memories of Shakespeare, Beaumont and 
Fletcher, Massinger, Nath/ Field, Philip Henslowe and Edward Al- 
leyne, and to all lovers of English poetry for its memories of Chaucer, 
Gower, James I. of Scotland and Oliver Goldsmith. Massinger lies in 
the choir beside his dear friend John Fletcher, though the exact spot 
is not known. In the last few years, the rector of St. Saviour's, the 
Rev. Dr. W. Thompson (whose name should be revered in the history 
of English literature and art), has succeeded, by indefatigable efforts, 
in securing for the church memorial windows to Massinger, Beaumont 
and Fletcher, Shakespeare, Alleyne and Chaucer. If it were without 
other attractions, these windows, among the most beautiful in England, 
would make the church profitable to any visitor, but for its hallowed 
associations it must always be to the student of letters at least as in- 
teresting as Westminster Abbey, and comparable with no other church 
in the world. 

The entry on the burial register, "Philip Massinger, a Stranger," 
is still legible. 



Page 121. The Roundel. 

I have no right, I think, to make use of this stanza without ac- 
knowledgment and humble apologies afar off to the great singer that 
has endowed English poetry with this and so many other stanzaic 
forms. But no words of mine could suffice to recount the world's in- 
debtedness to the greatest English singer and greatest English soul 
since Shelley, the master musician and master mind of modern song, 
Algernon Charles Swinburne, 



Page I2J. Der Silberhorn. 

The object of art being to transfer a feeling, poetry may be deemed 
for the transferring of the feeling of scenery as legitimate a vehicle as 
pictorial art. Some risk may be involved, it is true, of the current re- 
proach of "landscape" and "geographical" poetry, but the logical basis 
of these strictures seems open to much doubt. 



Page 142. Benjamin Harrison. 

"General Harrison's last words were of his sympathy with the 
Boers in their struggle against overwhelming odds." Whoever has read 
the luminous sentences that constitute this good man's last appeal to his 
countrymen (those memorable sentences wherein he demonstrates the 
justice of the Boer cause and warns us against the spirit of imperial- 
ism and aggression that dominates Great Britain and threatens us), 
must have been impressed with their irresistible logic, and with the 
clear vision and earnest patriotism of the man that wrote them. Not 
of General Harrison's political faith as to other matters, nevertheless I 
have dared to lay upon his tomb a little wreath to the memory of a 
great soul and true man. 

Page 144. The Long Fight. 

When the news reached London that General Roberts had entered 
Pretoria the populace took possession of the streets and celebrated the 
bloodless victory by getting drunk. From London Bridge to Picadilly 
Circus the ways were impassable. Some observers estimated that one 
million men, women and children must have been intoxicated in Lon- 
don that night. More depressing than the bestiality of this exhibition 
in what is called, for some reason unknown to me, "the capital of 
civilization," was the reflection that the triumph celebrated with such 
enthusiasm was the triumph of might over right, of the power of money 
over justice, of the interests of a class over the interests of the plain 
people everywhere, of an aristocracy over the cause of democracy. 
The people of London were, in fact, rejoicing over their own defeat. 
But the democratic cause has ever been familiar with reverses, and has 
advanced in spite of them. It may well be supposed that the days of 
the coup d'etat and the ascension of Napoleon the Little were as dark 
as these; but nineteen years after the beginning of the Second Empire, 
lo, the birth of the Third Republic! Nay, it is from the backward 
wave, indeed, that the forward wave gathers strength. 



IfriT 



JAN 2 1902 



''''' ^^^' TO C,j, 



IMt 



i902 



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